TRUE  TALES 
OF  THE  WEIRD 


SYDNEY  DICKINSON 


[  >rnia 
r  al 


,"\jUa 


TRUE  TALES  OF  THE  WEIRD 


TRUE  TALES  OF  THE  WEIRD 

A  Record  of  Personal  Experiences 
of  the   Supernatural 

BY 
SIDNEY  DICKINSON 


With  an  Introduction  By 

R.  H.  STETSON 

Profetior  of  Psychology 
Oberlin  College 

And  a  Prefatory  Note  By 

G.  O.  TUBBY 

Assistant  Secretary  A  merican 
Society    Psychical    Research 


NEW  YORK 

DUFFIELD  AND  COMPANY 
1920 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
DUFFIELD  AND  COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFATORY  NOTE vii 

INTRODUCTION 1 

AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 5 

I 

A  MYSTERY  OF  Two  CONTINENTS 11 

"A  SPIRIT  OF  HEALTH" 25 

THE  MIRACLE  OF  THE  FLOWERS    . 41 

THE  MIDNIGHT  HORSEMAN 57 

II 
THE  HAUNTED  BUNGALOW 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE    CONDEMNED        75 

II.    THE  CRIME 83 

III.  THE  FLIGHT  AND  CAPTURE 96 

IV.  THE  EXPIATION 105 

V.    THE  HOUSE  ON  THE  HILL 116 

VI.    ON  THE  WINGS  OF  THE  STORM 126 

VII.    A  GHOSTLY  CO-TENANCY 141 

VIII.    THE  DEAD  WALKS 152 

IX.    THE  GOBLINS  OF  THE  KITCHEN 162 

X.    A  SPECTRAL  BURGLARY 178 

XI.    "REST,  REST,  PERTURBED  SPIRIT!" 187 

XII.    THE  DEMONS  OF  THE  DARK  200 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  testify  that  the  MS.  of  this 
volume  of  stories  has  been  submitted  with 
abundant  testimonies  from  the  individuals  who 
knew  their  author  and  his  facts  at  first  hand, 
to  the  American  Society  for  Psychical  Research 
for  approval  or  disapproval. 

No  more  interesting  or  better  attested 
phenomena  of  the  kind  have  come  to  our  atten- 
tion, and  we  have  asked  that  a  copy  of  the  MS. 
be  filed  permanently  in  the  Society's  archives 
for  preservation  from  loss.  These  accounts 
by  Mr.  Dickinson  bear  internal  evidence  to 
their  true  psychic  origin  and  to  the  trained 
observer  scarcely  need  corroboration  or  other 
external  support.  They  ring  true.  And  they 
are,  in  addition,  moving  human  documents,  with 
a  strong  literary  appeal. 

GERTRUDE  OGDEN  TUBBY, 

Asst.  Sec.,  A.  S.  P.  R. 
April  5,  1920. 


[vii] 


INTRODUCTION 

THIS  account  of  striking  and  peculiar  events 
by  Mr.  Sidney  Dickinson  is  but  the  fulfillment 
of  an  intention  of  the  writer  interrupted  by  sud- 
den death.  Mr.  Dickinson  had  taken  careful 
notes  of  the  happenings  described  and,  being  a 
professional  observer  and  writer,  it  was  inevit- 
able that  he  should  preserve  the  narrative.  He 
had  been  slow  to  prepare  it  for  publication  be- 
cause of  the  prominent  and  enabling  part  played 
by  his  wife  in  the  occurrences.  After  her  death, 
when  an  increasing  interest  in  the  subject  had 
developed,  it  seemed  to  Mr.  Dickinson  that  the 
narrative  might  be  received  as  he  had  written 
it — as  a  careful  and  exact  account  of  most  re- 
markable events.  In  reverence  to  the  memory 
of  his  wife  and  out  of  respect  to  the  friends 
concerned  he  could  not  present  it  otherwise  to 
the  public. 

As  the  narrative  is  of  some  time  ago  and  the 
principal  witnesses  are  dead  or  inaccessible  the 
account  must  stand  for  itself;  the  endorsement 
of  the  American  Society  for  Physical  Research 


INTRODUCTION 

testifies  to  its  intrinsic  interest.  But  the  char- 
acter and  personality  of  the  writer  is  a  vital  con- 
sideration. Mr.  Sidney  Dickinson  was  a  pro- 
fessional journalist  and  lecturer.  After  gradua- 
tion from  Amherst  in  1874  he  served  on  the 
Springfield  Republican  and  the  San  Francisco 
Bulletin.  Later  he  was  prominent  as  an  art 
and  dramatic  critic  on  the  staff  of  the  Boston 
Journal.  After  extended  study  of  art  in  Euro- 
pean galleries  he  lectured  before  many  colleges, 
universities  and  art  associations.  He  spent 
some  years  in  Australia,  where  many  of  the 
events  of  this  account  took  place.  While 
travelling  in  Europe  and  Australia  he  was  cor- 
respondent for  a  number  of  papers  and  maga- 
zines, including  Scribner's  Monthly,  the  New 
York  Times,  the  Boston  Journal,  and  the 
Springfield  Republican.  During  a  visit  to  New 
Zealand  he  was  engaged  by  the  Colonial  Gov- 
ernment to  give  lectures  on  New  Zealand  in 
Australia  and  America. 

His  work  and  his  associates  testify  to  careful 
observation  and  sane  judgment.  Mr.  Dickin- 
son had  an  unusual  memory,  a  keen  sense  of 
accuracy  and  he  was  cool  and  practical  rather 
than  emotional  or  excitable.  No  one  who  was 
much  with  him  in  the  later  days  could  doubt 
the  entire  sincerity  of  the  man.  There  could 
[2] 


INTRODUCTION 

have  been  no  ulterior  motive  as  the  account 
itself  will  show.  The  narrative  was  written  be- 
cause he  felt  that  it  might  well  be  a  contribu- 
tion of  some  scientific  interest. 

R.  H.  STETSON, 

Professor  of  Psychology, 

Oberlin  College. 


[3] 


AUTHOR'S   PREFACE 

THESE  stories  are  not  "founded  upon  fact"; 
they  are  fact.  If  I  may  claim  any  merit  for 
them  it  is  this — they  are  absolutely  and  literally 
true.  They  seem  to  me  to  be  unusual  even 
among  the  mass  of  literature  that  has  been 
written  upon  the  subject  they  illustrate;  if  they 
possess  any  novelty  at  all  it  may  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  the  phenomena  they  describe 
occurred,  for  the  most  part,  without  invitation, 
without  reference  to  "conditions,"  favorable  or 
otherwise,  and  without  mediumistic  interven- 
tion. 

I  have  written  these  stories  with  no  purpose 
to  bolster  up  any  theory  or  to  strengthen  or 
weaken  any  belief,  and  I  must  say  frankly  that, 
in  my  opinion,  they  neither  prove  nor  disprove 
anything  whatsoever.  I  am  not  a  believer,  any 
more  than  I  am  a  sceptic,  in  regard  to  so-called 
"Spiritualism,"  and  have  consistently  held  to 
my  non-committal  attitude  in  this  matter  by 
refraining,  all  my  life,  from  consulting  a 
medium  or  attending  a  professional  seance.  In 
the  scientific  study  of  Psychology  I  have  a  lay- 
man's interest,  but  even  that  is  curious  rather 

[5] 


AUTHOR'S   PREFACE 

than  expectant; — my  experience,  which  I  think 
this  book  will  show  to  have  been  considerable, 
in  the  observation  of  occult  phenomena  has 
failed  to  afford  me  anything  like  a  positive  clue 
to  their  causes  or  meaning. 

In  fact,  I  have  long  ago  arrived  at  the 
opinion  that  any  one  who  devotes  himself  to 
the  study  of  what,  for  want  of  a  better  word, 
we  may  call  "supernatural"  will  inevitably  and 
at  last  find  himself  landed  in  an  impasse.  The 
first  steps  in  the  pursuit  are  easy,  and  seduc- 
tively promise  final  arrival  at  the  goal — but  in 
every  case  of  wrhich  I,  at  least,  have  knowledge 
the  course  abruptly  ends  (sometimes  sooner, 
sometimes  later)  against  a  wall  so  high  as  to 
be  unscalable,  not  to  be  broken  through,  ex- 
tending to  infinity  on  either  hand. 

That  disembodied  spirits  can  at  least  make 
their  existence  known  to  us  appears  to  me  as  a 
well-approved  fact;  that  they  are  "forbid  to 
tell  the  secrets  of  their  prison-house"  is  my 
equally  firm  conviction.  I  am  aware  that  such 
an  opinion  can  be  only  personal,  and  that  it  is 
hopeless  to  attempt  to  commend  it  by  satis- 
factory evidence;  those  who  have  had  experi- 
ences similar  to  those  which  I  have  recorded 
(and  their  number  is  much  greater  than  is  gen- 
erally supposed)  will  understand  how  this 
[6] 


AUTHOR'S   PREFACE 

opinion  has  been  reached — to  others  it  will  be 
inconceivable,  as  based  upon  what  seems  to 
them  impossible. 

If  what  I  have  written  should  seem  to  throw 
any  light,  however  faint,  upon  the  problem  of 
the  Mystery  of  Existence  in  whose  solution 
some  of  the  profoundest  intellects  of  the  world 
are  at  present  engaged,  my  labor  will  have  been 
worth  the  while.  I  submit  the  results  of  this 
labor  as  a  record,  with  a  lively  sense  of  the 
responsibility  I  assume  by  its  publication. 


[7] 


TRUE  TALES  OF  THE  WEIRD 


A   MYSTERY  OF  TWO  CONTINENTS 

THIS  story,  as  well  as  the  one  that  immedi- 
ately follows  it,  was  first  related  to  the  late 
\Vilkie  Collins,  the  noted  English  novelist, 
with  whom  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  ac- 
quainted— and  who,  as  all  his  intimates  know, 
and  as  those  whose  knowledge  of  him  is  derived 
from  his  romances  may  surmise,  was  an  earnest 
and  careful  student  of  occult  phenomena.  I 
placed  in  his  hands  all  the  concurrent  data  which 
I  could  secure,  and  furnished  the  names  of  wit- 
nesses to  the  incidents — which  names  are  now 
in  possession  of  the  publishers  of  this  volume — 
equipped  with  which  he  carried  out  a  thorough 
personal  investigation.  The  result  of  this  in- 
vestigation he  made  known  to  me,  one  pleasant 
spring  afternoon,  in  his  study  in  London. 

''During  my  life,"  he  said,  "I  have  made  a 
considerable  study  of  the  supernatural,  but  the 
knowledge  I  have  gained  is  not  very  definite. 
Take  the  matter  of  apparitions,  for  instance, 
to  which  the  two  interesting  stories  you  have 
submitted  to  me  relate : — I  have  come  to  regard 
these  as  subjective  rather  than  objective  phe- 
nomena, projections  from  an  excited  or  stimu- 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

lated  brain,  not  actual  existences.  Why,  I  have 
seen  thousands  of  ghosts  myself!  Many  a 
night,  after  writing  until  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  and  fortifying  myself  for  my  work 
with  strong  coffee,  I  have  had  to  shoulder  them 
aside  as  I  went  upstairs  to  bed.  These  ap- 
parent presences  were  nothing  to  me,  since  I 
knew  perfectly  well  that  their  origin  was  no- 
where else  than  in  my  overwrought  nerves — and 
I  have  come  to  conclude  that  most  cases  of 
visions  of  this  sort  are  to  be  explained  by 
attributing  them  to  a  temporary  or  permanent 
disorganization  of  the  brain  of  the  percipient. 
Mind,  I  do  not  say  all  cases — there  are  many 
that  are  not  to  be  set  aside  so  readily.  Again, 
it  is  not  easy  to  arrive  at  the  facts  in  any  given 
case;  even  if  the  observer  is  honest,  he  may  not 
have  cultivated  the  habit  of  exact  statement — 
moreover,  stories  are  apt  to  grow  by  repeti- 
tion, and  a  tendency  to  exaggerate  is  common 
to  most  of  us.  Now  and  then,  however,  I  have 
come  upon  an  account  of  supernatural  visitation 
which  seems  an  exception  to  the  general  run, 
and  upsets  my  theories;  and  I  must  say  that, 
having  from  time  to  time  investigated  at  least 
fifteen  hundred  such  instances,  the  two  stories 
you  have  furnished  me  are  of  them  all  the  best 
authenticated." 

[12] 


A    MYSTERY    OF    TWO    CONTINENTS 

Some  years  ago,  in  the  course  of  a  tour  of 
art  study  which  took  me  through  the  principal 
countries  of  Europe,  I  found  myself  in  Naples, 
having  arrived  there  by  a  leisurely  progress  that 
began  at  Gibraltar,  and  had  brought  me  by 
easy  stages,  and  with  many  stops  en  route, 
through  the  Mediterranean.  The  time  of  year 
was  late  February,  and  the  season,  even  for 
Southern  Italy,  was  much  advanced; — so,  in 
visiting  the  Island  of  Capri  (the  exact  date,  I 
recollect,  was  February  22)  I  found  this  most 
charming  spot  in  the  Vesuvian  Bay  smiling  and 
verdant,  and  was  tempted  by  the  brilliant  sun- 
shine and  warm  breezes  to  explore  the  hilly 
country  which  rose  behind  the  port  at  which  I 
had  landed. 

The  fields  upon  the  heights  were  green  with 
grass,  and  spangled  with  delicate  white  flowers 
bearing  a  yellow  centre,  which,  while  smaller 
than  our  familiar  American  field-daisies,  and 
held  upon  more  slender  stalks,  reminded  me  of 
them.  Having  in  mind  certain  friends  in  then 
bleak  New  England,  whence  I  had  strayed  into 
this  Land  of  Summer,  I  plucked  a  number  of 
these  blossoms  and  placed  them  between  the 
leaves  of  my  guide-book — Baedeker's  "Southern 
Italy," — intending  to  inclose  them  in  letters 
which  I  then  planned  to  write  to  these  friends, 

[13] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

contrasting  the  conditions  attending  their 
"Washington's  Birthday"  with  those  in  which 
I  fortunately  found  myself. 

Returning  to  Naples,  the  many  interests  of 
that  city  put  out  of  my  head  for  the  time  the 
thought  of  letter-writing,  and  three  days  later 
I  took  the  train  for  Rome,  with  my  corre- 
spondence still  in  arrears.  The  first  day  of  my 
stay  in  Rome  was  devoted  to  an  excursion  by 
carriage  into  the  Campagna,  and  on  the  way 
back  to  the  city  I  stopped  to  see  that  most  in- 
teresting and  touching  of  Roman  monuments, 
the  Tomb  of  Cecilia  Metella.  Every  tourist 
knows  and  has  visited  that  beautiful  memorial 
— so  I  do  not  need  to  describe  its  massive 
walls,  its  roof  (now  fallen  and  leaving  the 
sepulchre  open  to  the  sky)  and  the  heavy  turf 
which  covers  the  earth  of  its  interior.  This 
green  carpet  of  Nature,  when  I  visited  the 
tomb,  was  thickly  strewn  with  fragrant  violets, 
and  of  these,  as  of  the  daisylike  flowers  I  had 
found  in  Capri,  I  collected  several,  and  placed 
them  in  my  guide-book — this  time  Baedeker's 
"Central  Italy." 

I  mention  these  two  books — the  "Southern" 
and  the  "Central  Italy"— because  they  have  an 
important  bearing  on  my  story. 

The  ne\t  day,  calling  at  my  banker's,  I  saw 

[14] 


A    MYSTERY    OF    TWO    CONTINENTS 

an  announcement  that  letters  posted  before  four 
o'clock  that  afternoon  would  be  forwarded  to 
catch  the  mail  for  New  York  by  a  specially  fast 
steamer  for  Liverpool,  and  hastened  back  to 
my  hotel  with  the  purpose  of  preparing,  and 
thus  expediting,  my  much-delayed  correspond- 
ence. The  most  important  duty  of  the  moment 
seemed  to  be  the  writing  of  a  letter  to  my  wife, 
then  living  in  Boston,  and  to  this  I  particularly 
addressed  myself.  I  described  my  trip  through 
the  Mediterranean  and  my  experience  in  Naples 
and  Rome,  and  concluded  my  letter  as  fol- 
lows: 

"In  Naples  I  found  February  to  be  like  our 
New  England  May,  and  in  Capri,  which  I 
visited  on  'Washington's  Birthday,'  I  found  the 
heights  of  the  island  spangled  over  with  delicate 
flowers,  some  of  which  I  plucked,  and  enclose 
in  this  letter.  And,  speaking  of  flowers,  I  send 
you  also  some  violets  which  I  gathered  yester- 
day at  the  Tomb  of  Cecelia  Metella,  outside 
of  Rome — you  know  about  this  monument, 
or,  if  not,  you  can  look  up  its  history,  and  save 
me  from  transcribing  a  paragraph  from  the 
guide-book.  I  send  you  these  flowers  from 
Naples  and  Rome,  respectively,  in  order  that 
you  may  understand  in  what  agreeable  sur- 
roundings I  find  myself,  as  compared  with  the 

[15] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

ice  and  snow  and  bitter  cold  which  are  probably 
your  experience  at  this  season." 

Having  finished  the  letter,  I  took  from  the 
guide-book  on  "Central  Italy"  which  lay  on 
the  table  before  me,  the  violets  from  the  Tomb 
of  Cecilia  Metella,  enclosed  them,  with  the 
sheets  I  had  written,  in  an  envelope,  sealed  and 
addressed  it,  and  was  about  to  affix  the  stamp, 
when  it  suddenly  occurred  to  me  that  I  had  left 
out  the  flowers  I  had  plucked  at  Capri.  These, 
I  then  recalled,  were  still  in  the  guide-book  for 
"Southern  Italy,"  which  I  had  laid  away  in 
my  portmanteau  as  of  no  further  present  use 
to  me.  Accordingly  I  unstrapped  and  unlocked 
the  portmanteau,  found  the  guide-book,  took 
out  the  flowers  from  Capri  which  were  still  be- 
tween its  leaves,  opened  and  destroyed  the  en- 
velope already  addressed,  added  the  daisies  to 
the  violets,  and  put  the  whole  into  a  new  in- 
closure,  which  I  again  directed,  stamped,  and 
duly  dropped  into  the  mail-box  at  the  bankers'. 

I  am  insistent  upon  these  details  because  they 
particularly  impressed  upon  my  mind  the  cer- 
tainty that  both  varieties  of  flowers  were  in- 
closed in  the  letter  to  my  wife.  Subsequent 
events  would  have  been  strange  enough  if  I 
had  not  placed  the  flowers  in  the  letter  at  all — 
but  the  facts  above  stated  assure  me  that  there 
[16] 


A    MYSTERY    OF    TWO    CONTINENTS 

is  no  question  that  I  did  so,  and  make  what  fol- 
lowed more  than  ever  inexplicable. 

So  much  for  the  beginning  of  the  affair — in 
Italy;  now  for  its  conclusion — in  New  Eng- 
land. 

During  my  year  abroad,  my  wife  was  living, 
as  I  have  said,  in  Boston,  occupying  at  the  Win- 
throp  House,  on  Bowdoin  street — a  hotel  which 
has  since,  I  believe,  been  taken  down — a  suite 
of  rooms  comprising  parlor,  bedroom  and  bath. 
With  her  was  my  daughter  by  a  former  mar- 
riage, whose  mother  had  died  at  her  birth, 
some  seven  years  before.  On  the  same  floor  of 
the  hotel  were  apartments  occupied  by  Mrs. 
Celia  Thaxter,  a  woman  whose  name  is  well 
known  in  American  literature,  and  with  whom 
my  wife  sustained  a  very  intimate  friendship. 
I  am  indebted  for  the  facts  I  am  now  setting 
down  not  only  to  my  wife,  who  gave  me  an 
oral  account  of  them  on  my  return  from 
Europe,  four  months  later,  but  also  to  this 
lady  who  wrote  out  and  preserved  a  record  of 
them  at  the  time  of  their  occurrence,  and  sent 
me  a  copy  of  the  same  while  I  was  still  abroad. 

About  ten  days  after  I  had  posted  my  letter, 
inclosing  the  flowers  from  Capri  and  Rome, 
my  wife  suddenly  awoke  in  the  middle  of  the 

[17] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

night,  and  saw  standing  at  the  foot  of  her  bed 
£he  form  of  the  child's  mother.  The  aspect 
of  the  apparition  was  so  serene  and  gracious 
thaf,  although  greatly  startled,  she  felt  no 
alarm;  moreover,  it  had  once  before  appeared 
to  her,  as  the  reader  will  learn  in  the  second 
story  of  this  series,  which,  for  reasons  of  my 
own,  I  have  not  arranged  in  chronological 
order.  Then  she  heard,  as  if  from  a  voice  at 
a  great  distance,  these  words :  "I  have  brought 
you  some  flowers  from  Sidney."  At  the  next 
instant  the  figure  vanished. 

The  visitation  had  been  so  brief  that  my 
wife,  although  she  at  once  arose  and  lighted  the 
gas,  argued  with  herself  that  she  had  been 
dreaming,  and  after  a  few  minutes  extinguished 
the  light  and  returned  to  bed,  where  she  slept 
soundly  until  six  o'clock  the  next  morning.  Al- 
ways an  early  riser,  she  dressed  at  once  and 
went  from  her  bedroom,  where  the  child  was 
still  sleeping,  to  her  parlor.  In  the  centre  of 
the  room  was  a  table,  covered  with  a  green 
cloth,  and  as  she  entered  and  happened  to  glance 
at  it  she  saw,  to  her  surprise,  a  number  of  dried 
flowers  scattered  over  it.  A  part  of  these  she 
recognized  as  violets,  but  the  rest  were  un- 
familiar to  her,  although  they  resembled  very 
small  daisies. 

[18] 


MYSTERY    OF    TWO    COXTIXEXTS 


The  vision  of  the  night  before  was  at  once 
forcibly  recalled  to  her,  and  the  words  of  the 
apparition,  "I  have  brought  you  some  lowers.*" 
seemed  to  hare  a  meaning.  I  hough  what  k 
she  could  not  understand.  After 
these  strange  blossoms  for  a  tune  she  lUmmJ 
to  her  chamber  and  awakened  the  child, 
she  then  took  to  seethe  lowers,  and 
if  she  knew  anything  about  them. 

"Why,  no,  mamma,"  the  fittk  girl  replied; 
"I  have  never  seen  them  before.  I  was  read- 
ing my  new  book  at  the  tank  last  night  until 
I  went  to  bed,  and  if  they  were  there  I  should 
have  seen  them." 

So  the  lowers  were  gathered  up  and  placed 
oa  the  shelf  above  the  fireplace,  and  during  the 
morning  were  exhibited  to  Mrs.  Timid,  who 
came  in  for  a  chat,  and  who,  fike  my  wife,  could 
maty  nothing  of  the  matter. 

At  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of 
that  day  the  postman  called  at  the  hotel,  bear- 
ing among  his  mail  several  letters  for  my  wife, 
which  were  at  once  sent  up  to  her.  Among 
them  was  one  that  was  postmarked  "Rome"' 

my  K»iy|^»  dinar   and  With  thtS 


she  sat  down  as  the  first  to  be  read.  It  con- 
tained an  account,  among  other  things,  of  my 
experiences  in  Naples  and  Rone,  and  in  due 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

course  mentioned  the  enclosure  of  flowers  from 
Capri  and  from  the  Tomb  of  Cecilia  Metella. 
There  were,  however,  no  flowers  whatever  in 
the  letter,  although  each  sheet  and  the  envelope 
were  carefully  examined;  my  wife  even  shook 
her  skirts  and  made  a  search  upon  the  carpet, 
thinking  that  the  stated  enclosure  might  have 
fallen  out  as  the  letter  was  opened.  Nothing 
could  be  found — yet  ten  hours  before  the 
arrival  of  the  letter,  flowers  exactly  such  as  it 
described  had  been  found  on  the  centre-table ! 

Mrs.  Thaxter  was  summoned,  and  the  two 
ladies  marvelled  greatly.  Among  Mrs.  Thax- 
ter's  friends  in  the  city  was  a  well-known 
botanist,  and  she  at  once  suggested  that  the 
flowers  be  offered  for  his  inspection.  No  time 
was  lost  in  calling  upon  him,  and  the  flowers 
were  shown  (without,  however,  the  curious 
facts  about  them  being  mentioned),  with  the 
request  that  he  state,  if  it  were  possible,  whence 
they  came.  He  examined  them  carefully  and 
then  said: 

"As  to  the  violets,  it  is  difficult  to  say  where 
they  grew,  since  these  flowers,  wherever  they 
may  be  found  in  the  world  (and  they  are  of 
almost  universal  occurrence,  through  cultiva- 
tion or  otherwise)  may  everywhere  be  very 
much  alike.  Certain  peculiarities  in  these  speci- 
[20] 


A    MYSTERY    OF    TWO     CONTINENTS 

mens,  however,  coupled  with  the  scent  they  still 
faintly  retain  and  which  is  characteristic,  in- 
cline me  to  the  opinion  that  they  came  from 
some  part  of  Southern  Europe — perhaps 
France,  but  more  likely  Italy.  As  to  the  others, 
which,  as  you  say,  resemble  small  daisies,  they 
must  have  come  from  some  point  about  the 
Bay  of  Naples,  as  I  am  not  aware  of  their 
occurrence  elsewhere." 


"A   SPIRIT   OF   HEALTH" 


"A   SPIRIT   OF   HEALTH" 

IT  is  common,  and,  in  the  main,  a  well- 
founded  objection  to  belief  in  so-called  super- 
natural manifestations,  that  they  seem  in 
general  to  subserve  no  purpose  of  usefulness 
or  help  to  us  who  are  still  upon  this  mortal 
plane,  and  thus  are  unworthy  of  intelligences 
such  as  both  love  and  reason  suggest  our  de- 
parted friends  to  be.  The  mummeries  and 
too-frequent  juggleries  of  dark-seances,  and  the 
inconclusive  and  usually  vapid  "communica- 
tions" that  are  vouchsafed  through  profes- 
sional mediums,  have  done  much  to  confirm  this 
opinion,  and  the  possibility  of  apparitions,  par- 
ticularly, has  been  weakened,  rather  than 
strengthened,  in  the  minds  of  intelligent  persons 
by  the  machinery  of  cabinets  and  other  ap- 
pliances which  seem  to  be  necessary  parapher- 
nalia in  "materializing"  the  spirits  of  the  dead. 
That  the  departed  ever  re-appear  in  such 
form  as  they  presented  during  life  I  am  not 
prepared  to  affirm,  even  in  view  of  many  ex- 
periences of  a  nature  like  that  which  I  am  about 
to  relate.  In  the  generality  of  such  cases  I 
am  decidedly  in  agreement  with  the  opinion  of 

[25] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

the  late  Wilkie  Collins,  as  set  forth  in  the 
preceding  story — although  I  should  be  inclined 
to  extend  that  opinion  far  enough  to  include 
the  admission  of  the  possibility  that  it  was  the 
actual  Presence  which  so  worked  upon  the  mind 
of  the  percipient  as  to  cause  it  to  project  from 
itself  the  phantom  appearance.  This  may  seem 
somewhat  like  a  quibble  to  confirmed  believers 
in  apparitions,  of  whom  there  are  many,  and 
perhaps  it  is — while  those  who  are  impatient 
of  ingenious  psychological  explanations  may 
find  in  the  following  story  a  confirmation  of  the 
conviction  which  they  hold,  that  the  dead  may 
appear  in  the  form  in  which  we  knew  them, 
bringing  warning  and  aid  to  the  living. 

It  is  now  thirty-one  years  ago  that  the  wife 
of  my  youth,  after  less  than  a  year  of  married 
life,  was  taken  from  me  by  death,  leaving  to 
me  an  infant  daughter,  in  whom  all  the  personal 
and  mental  traits  of  the  mother  gradually  re- 
produced themselves  in  a  remarkable  degree. 
Some  three  years  later  I  married  again,  and 
the  child,  who,  during  that  period,  had  been 
in  the  care  of  her  grandparents,  at  regular  in- 
tervals, on  either  side  of  the  house  respectively, 
was  taken  into  the  newly- formed  home. 

A  strong  affection  between  the  new  mother 

[26] 


'A  SPIRIT  OF  HEALTH' 

and  the  little  girl  was  established  at  once,  and 
their  relations  soon  became  more  like  those  of 
blood  than  of  adoption.  The  latter,  never 
having  known  her  own  mother,  had  no  memory 
of  associations  that  might  have  weakened  the 
influence  of  the  new  wife,  and  the  step-mother, 
as  the  years  passed  and  she  had  no  chil- 
dren, grew  to  regard  the  one  who  had  come 
to  her  at  her  marriage  as  in  very  truth  her 
own. 

I  often  thought,  when  seeing  those  two  to- 
gether, so  fond  and  devoted  each  to  each, 
that  if  those  we  call  dead  still  live  and  have 
knowledge  of  facts  in  the  existence  they  have 
left  behind,  the  mother  of  the  child  may  have 
felt  her  natural  yearnings  satisfied  in  beholding 
their  mutual  affection,  and  even  have  found 
therein  the  medium  to  extend  from  her  own 
sphere  the  influence  of  happiness  which  some 
may  believe  they  see  exercised  in'the  events  that 
this  narrative,  as  well  as  others  in  the  series, 
describes. 

At  the  time  in  which  these  events  occurred,  I 
was  traveling  in  Europe,  and  my  wife  and 
daughter  were  living  in  Boston,  as  stated  in  the 
story  with  which  this  book  opens.  In  the  ad- 
joining town  of  Brookline  there  resided  a  lady 
of  wealth  and  social  prominence,  Mrs.  John 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

W.  Candler,  wife  of  a  gentleman  who  had  large 
railway  interests  in  the  South,  and  who  was, 
moreover,  Representative  for  his  district  in  the 
Lower  House  of  Congress.  Mrs.  Candler  was 
a  woman  of  rare  beauty  and  possessed  unusual 
intellectual  gifts ;  she  was  also  a  close  personal 
friend  of  Mrs.  Thaxter,  whom  I  have  before 
mentioned  and  who  introduced  her  to  my  wife 
— the  acquaintance  thus  formed  developing 
into  an  affectionate  intimacy  that  ended  only 
with  Mrs.  Candler' s  death,  a  dozen  years  ago. 
As  her  husband's  business  interests  and  legis- 
lative duties  frequently  compelled  his  absence 
from  home,  it  was  Mrs.  Candler's  delight  to 
enliven  her  enforced  solitudes  by  dispensing  her 
large  and  unostentatious  hospitality  to  her 
chosen  friends — so  that  it  often  happened  that 
Mrs.  Thaxter,  and  my  wife  and  child,  were 
guests  for  considerable  periods  at  her  luxurious 
residence. 

One  afternoon  in  mid-winter,  Mrs.  Candler 
drove  into  the  city  to  call  upon  my  wife,  and, 
finding  her  suffering  from  a  somewhat  obstinate 
cold,  urged  her,  with  her  usual  warmth  and 
heartiness,  to  return  home  with  her  for  a  couple 
of  days,  for  the  sake  of  the  superior  comforts 
which  her  house  could  afford  as  compared  with 
those  of  the  hotel.  My  wife  demurred  to  this, 
[28] 


*A    SPIRIT    OF     HEALTH* 

chiefly  on  the  ground  that,  as  the  weather  was 
very  severe,  she  did  not  like  to  take  the  child 
with  her,  since,  being  rather  delicate  that 
winter  although  not  actually  ill,  she  dared  not 
remove  her,  even  temporarily,  from  the  equable 
temperature  of  the  hotel. 

While  the  matter  was  being  discussed  another 
caller  was  announced  in  the  person  of  Miss 
Mae  Harris  Anson,  a  young  woman  of  some 
eighteen  years,  daughter  of  a  wealthy  family 
in  Minneapolis,  who  was  pursuing  a  course  of 
study  at  the  New  England  Conservatory  of 
Music.  Miss  Anson  was  very  fond  of  children, 
and  possessed  an  unusual  talent  for  entertain- 
ing them — and  thus  was  a  great  favorite  of 
my  little  daughter,  who  hailed  her  arrival  with 
rapture.  This  fact  furnished  Mrs.  Candler 
with  an  idea  which  she  immediately  advanced 
in  the  form  of  a  suggestion  that  Miss  Anson 
might  be  willing  to  care  for  the  child  during  my 
wife's  absence.  To  this  proposal  Miss  Anson 
at  once  assented,  saying,  in  her  lively  way,  that, 
as  her  school  was  then  in  recess  for  a  few  days, 
she  would  like  nothing  better  than  to  exchange 
her  boarding-house  for  a  hotel  for  a  while,  and 
in  consideration  thereof  to  act  as  nursemaid  for 
such  time  as  might  be  required  of  her.  It  was 
finally  agreed,  therefore,  that  Miss  Anson 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

should  come  to  the  hotel  the  next  morning,  pre- 
pared for  a  two  or  three  days'  stay; — this  she 
did,  and  early  in  the  afternoon  Mrs.  Candler 
arrived  in  her  sleigh,  and  with  my  wife  was 
driven  to  her  home. 

The  afternoon  and  evening  passed  without 
incident,  and  my  wife  retired  early  to  bed,  being 
assigned  to  a  room  next  to  Mrs.  Candler,  and 
one  that  could  be  entered  only  through  that 
lady's  apartment.  The  next  morning  she  arose 
rather  late,  and  yielding  to  the  arguments  of 
her  hostess,  who  insisted  that  she  should  not 
undergo  the  exertion  of  going  down  to  break- 
fast, that  repast  was  served  in  her  room,  and 
she  partook  of  it  while  seated  in  an  easy  chair  at 
a  table  before  an  open  fire  that  blazed  cheerily 
in  the  wide  chimney-place.  The  meal  finished 
and  the  table  removed,  she  continued  to  sit  for 
some  time  in  her  comfortable  chair,  being  at- 
tired only  in  dressing-gown  and  slippers,  con- 
sidering whether  she  should  go  to  bed  again, 
as  Mrs.  Candler  had  recommended,  or  prepare 
herself  to  rejoin  her  friend,  whom  she  could 
hear  talking  in  the  adjoining  room  with  another 
member  of  the  household. 

The  room  in  which  she  was  sitting  had  a  large 
window  fronting  upon  the  southeast,  and  the 

[30] 


4A    SPIRIT    OF    HEALTH* 

morning  sun,  shining  from  a  cloudless  sky, 
poured  through  it  a  flood  of  light  that  stretched 
nearly  to  her  feet,  and  formed  a  golden  track 
across  the  carpet.  Her  eyes  wandered  from 
one  to  another  object  in  the  luxurious  apart- 
ment, and  as  they  returned  from  one  of  these 
excursions  to  a  regard  of  her  more  immediate 
surroundings,  she  was  startled  to  perceive  that 
some  one  was  with  her — one  who,  standing  in 
the  full  light  that  came  through  the  window, 
was  silently  observing  her.  Some  subtle  and 
unclassified  sense  informed  her  that  the  figure 
in  the  sunlight  was  not  of  mortal  mold — it  was 
indistinct  in  form  and  outline,  and  seemed  to  be 
a  part  of,  rather  than  separate  from,  the 
radiance  that  surrounded  it.  It  was  the  figure 
of  a  young  and  beautiful  woman  with  golden 
hair  and  blue  eyes,  and  from  both  face  and 
eyes  was  carried  the  impression  of  a  great 
anxiety;  a  robe  of  some  filmy  white  material 
covered  her  form  from  neck  to  feet,  and  bare 
arms,  extending  from  flowing  sleeves,  were 
stretched  forth  in  a  gesture  of  appeal. 

My  wife,  stricken  with  a  feeling  in  which 
awe  dominated  fear,  lay  back  in  her  chair  for 
some  moments  silently  regarding  the  appari- 
tion, not  knowing  if  she  were  awake  or  dream- 
ing. A  strange  familiarity  in  the  face  troubled 

[31] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

her,  for  she  knew  she  had  never  seen  it  before 
— then  understanding  came  to  her,  and  the 
recollection  of  photographs,  and  of  the  features 
of  her  daughter  by  adoption,  flashed  upon  her 
mind  the  instant  conviction  that  she  was  gazing 
at  the  mother  who  died  when  the  child  was 
born. 

"What  is  it?"  she  finally  found  strength  to 
whisper.  "Why  do  you  come  to  me?" 

The  countenance  of  the  apparition  took  on 
an  expression  of  trouble  more  acute  even  than 
before. 

"The  child!  The  child!"— the  cry  came 
from  the  shadowy  lips  distinctly,  yet  as  if 
uttered  at  a  great  distance.  "Go  back  to  town 
at  once !" 

"But  why?"  my  wife  inquired.  "I  do  not 
understand  what  you  mean." 

The  figure  began  to  fade  away,  as  if  reab- 
sorbed  in  the  light  that  enveloped  it,  but  the 
voice  came  again  as  before : — "Go  to  your  room 
and  look  in  your  bureau  drawer!" — and  only 
the  sunlight  was  to  be  seen  in  the  spot  where 
the  phantom  had  stood. 

For  some  moments  my  wife  remained  re- 
clining in  her  chair,  completely  overcome  by  her 
strange  vision;  then  she  got  upon  her  feet,  and 
half  ran,  half  staggered,  into  the  next  room 

[32] 


*A  SPIRIT  OF  HEALTH' 

where  Mrs.  Candler  and  her  companion  were 
still  conversing. 

"Why,  my  dear  I"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Candler, 
"what  in  the  world  is  the  matter?  You  are  as 
pale  as  a  ghost!" 

"I  think  I  have  seen  one,"  panted  my  wife. 
"Tell  me,  has  anyone  passed  through  here  into 
my  room?" 

"Why,  no,"  her  friend  replied;  "how  could 
anyone?  We  have  both  been  sitting  here  ever 
since  breakfast." 

"Then  it  is  true!"  cried  my  wife.  "Some- 
thing terrible  is  happening  in  town!  Please, 
please  take  me  to  my  rooms  at  once !" — and  she 
hurriedly  related  what  she  had  seen. 

Mrs.  Candler  endeavored  to  soothe  her-— • 
she  had  been  dreaming;  all  must  be  well  with 
the  child,  otherwise  Miss  Anson  would  at  once 
inform  them; — moreover,  rather  than  have 
her  brave  a  ride  to  town  in  the  bitter  cold  of 
the  morning,  she  would  send  a  servant  after 
luncheon  to  inquire  for  news  at  the  hotel.  My 
wife  was  not  convinced  by  these  arguments  but 
finally  yielded  to  them;  Mrs.  Candler  gave  her 
the  morning  paper  as  a  medium  for  quieting 
her  mind,  and  she  returned  with  it  to  her  room 
and  resumed  her  seat  in  the  easy  chair. 

She  had  hardly  begun  her  reading,  however, 

[33] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

when  the  newspaper  was  snatched  from  her 
hand  and  thrown  to  the  opposite  side  of  the 
room,  and  as  she  started  up  in  alarm  she  saw 
the  apparition  again  standing  in  the  sunlight, 
and  again  heard  the  voice — this  time  in  a  tone 
of  imperious  command — "Go  to  your  rooms  at 
once  and  look  in  your  bureau  drawer !"  At  the 
utterance  of  these  words  the  apparition  van- 
ished, leaving  my  wife  so  overwhelmed  with 
fear  and  amazement  that  for  some  time  she 
was  powerless  to  move — then  reason  and  con- 
trol of  action  returned  to  her,  and  she  was  able 
to  regain  her  friend's  room  and  acquaint  her 
with  the  facts  of  this  second  visitation.  This 
time  Mrs.  Candler  made  no  attempt  to  oppose 
her  earnest  purpose  to  return  to  town,  the 
horses  and  sleigh  were  ordered  from  the 
stables,  my  wife  hurriedly  dressed  herself,  and 
in  half  an  hour  both  ladies  were  speeding 
toward  Boston. 

When  they  reached  the  entrance  of  the 
hotei,  my  wife,  whose  excitement  had  increased 
greatly  during  the  drive,  sprang  from  the  sleigh 
and  rushed  upstairs,  with  Mrs.  Candler  close 
behind  her,  burst  into  the  door  of  her  rooms 
like  a  whirlwind,  and  discovered — the  child 
absorbed  in  architectural  pursuits  with  a  set  of 
building  blocks  in  the  middle  of  the  sitting- 

[34] 


*A     SPIRIT    OF     HEALTH* 

room,  and  Miss  Anson  calmly  reading  a  novel 
in  a  rocking  chair  by  the  window ! 

The  picture  thus  presented  was  so  serene  and 
commonplace  by  comparison  with  what  my 
wife's  agitation  had  led  her  to  expect,  that  Mrs. 
Candler  at  once  burst  out  laughing;  my  wife's 
face  also  showed  intense  bewilderment — then, 
crying,  "She  said  'look  in  the  bureau  drawer!' ' 
she  hurried  into  the  bedroom  with  Mrs.  Cand- 
ler at  her  heels. 

The  bureau,  a  conventional  piece  of  bedroom 
furniture,  stood  at  the  head  of  the  child's  bed, 
and  presented  an  entirely  innocent  appearance; 
nevertheless  my  wife  went  straight  up  to  it,  and, 
firmly  grasping  the  handles,  pulled  out  the  top- 
most drawer.  Instantly  a  mass  of  flame  burst 
forth,  accompanied  by  a  cloud  of  acrid  smoke 
that  billowed  to  the  ceiling,  and  the  whole  in- 
terior of  the  bureau  seemed  to  be  ablaze.  Mrs. 
Candler,  with  great  presence  of  mind,  seized 
a  pitcher  of  water  and  dashed  it  upon  the  fire, 
which  action  checked  it  for  the  moment,  and 
Miss  Anson  flew  into  the  hall,  arousing  the 
house  with  her  cries.  Mrs.  Thaxter,  who  was 
at  the  moment  coming  to  my  wife's  apartment 
from  her  own,  hurried  in  and  saw  the  blazing 
bureau  and  the  two  white-faced  women  before 
it  and  turned  quickly  to  summon  help — em- 

[35] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

ployes  came  running  with  an  extinguisher,  and 
in  five  minutes  the  danger  was  over. 

When  the  excitement  had  subsided,  an 
examination  was  made  as  to  the  cause  of  the 
conflagration,  with  the  following  result: 

My  wife,  who  was  a  skilful  painter  in  oils, 
and  devoted  much  of  her  time  to  this  employ- 
ment, was  accustomed  to  keep  her  colors  and 
brushes  in  the  upper  drawer  of  the  bureau  in 
her  bedroom.  She  had  also,  and  very  care- 
lessly, placed  in  a  corner  of  the  drawer  a  quan- 
tity of  loose  rags  which  had  become  thoroughly 
saturated  with  oil  and  turpentine  from  their 
use  in  cleaning  her  palette  and  brushes. 

I  am  indebted  for  the  above  facts  not  only 
to  Mrs.  Thaxter  and  Mrs.  Candler,  both  of 
whom  I  have  frequently  heard  relate  this  story, 
but,  particularly,  to  Miss  Anson  herself,  who 
has  been,  at  the  time  of  writing  this,  for  several 
years  connected  with  the  editorial  staff  of  the 
Minneapolis  Journal.  In  a  letter  which  she 
sent  me  in  response  to  my  request  that  she 
should  confirm  my  recollection,  she  set  forth 
clearly  the  causes  of  the  conflagration  in  the 
following  words: 

"Some  time  before  she  [my  wife]  had  put 
a  whole  package  of  matches  into  a  stewpan,  in 
which  she  heated  water,  and  set  the  pan  in 

[36] 


4A    SPIRIT    OF    HEALTH* 

with  these  paints  and  rags.  Then,  one  night, 
when  in  a  hurry  for  some  hot  water,  she  had 
gone  in,  in  the  dark,  and  forgetting  all  about 
the  matches,  had  dumped  them  upon  the  tubes 
of  oil  paints  when  she  pulled  out  the  pan. 

"Every  one  of  the  heads  of  these  matches 
had  been  burned  off,  evidently  through  spon- 
taneous combustion.  I  went  through  them  all, 
and  not  one  had  been  ignited.  The  rags  were 
burned  and  the  whole  inside  of  the  drawer  was 
charred.  The  fire  could  not  have  been  kept 
under  longer  than  the  following  night,  and 
would  probably  have  burned  the  child  and  me 
in  bed,  before  anyone  dreamed  there  was  a 
fire." 


[37] 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  THE  FLOWERS 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  THE  FLOWERS 

AMONG  the  "phenomena"  which  attend  the 
average  spiritualistic  seance  a  favorite  one  is 
the  apparent  production  from  space  of  quan- 
tities of  flowers — to  the  supernatural  source 
of  which  credence  or  doubt  is  given  according 
'to  the  degree  of  belief  or  scepticism  inherent 
in  the  individual  sitters.  Having  never  at- 
tended one  of  these  gatherings,  I  am  not  able 
to  describe  such  an  incident  as  occurs  under 
such  auspices;  but  the  suggestion  recalls  to  my 
mind  two  very  remarkable  events  in  which 
flowers  were  produced  in  a  seemingly  inex- 
plicable manner,  and  without  the  assistance  (if 
that  be  the  right  word)  of  mediumistic  control. 
In  one  of  these  experiences  I  personally  par- 
ticipated, and  in  both  of  them  my  wife  was  con- 
cerned— therefore  I  can  vouch  for  their  occur- 
rence. 

Some  months  after  the  happenings  recorded 
in  the  two  previous  narratives,  I  was  spending 
the  summer  following  my  return  from  Europe 
in  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  at  the  resi- 
dence of  my  father,  having  with  me  my  wife 
and  daughter.  The  mother  of  the  child,  who, 

[41] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

as  I  have  said,  died  in  giving  her  birth,  was  a 
resident  of  the  town  at  the  time  of  our  mar- 
riage, and  her  body  reposed  in  our  family's 
lot  in  the  cemetery.  The  circumstance  of  this 
bereavement  caused  the  warmest  affections  of 
my  father  and  and  mother  to  centre  upon  my 
daughter,  she  being  then  their  only  grandchild. 

The  little  girl  was  passionately  fond  of  flow- 
ers, and  her  indulgent  grandfather,  himself  a 
zealous  horticulturist  and  grower  of  choice 
fruits,  had  that  summer  allotted  to  her  sole 
use  a  plot  six  feet  square  in  his  spacious  gardens, 
which  became  the  pride  of  her  heart  from  the 
brilliant  array  of  blooms  which  she  had  coaxed 
to  grow  in  it.  Her  favorite  flowers  were 
pansies,  with  the  seeds  of  which  she  had  planted 
nearly  one-half  of  the  space  at  her  disposal. 
They  had  germinated  successfully  and  flourished 
amazingly,  and  at  the  time  of  which  I  write 
that  part  of  the  bed  devoted  to  them  was  a 
solid  mass  of  pansies  of  every  conceivable 
variety. 

At  about  four  o'clock  one  afternoon  my  wife 
and  I  set  out  for  a  walk  through  the  famous 
meadows  that  stretched  away  from  the  back 
of  the  grounds,  and  on  our  return,  some  two 
hours  later,  we  saw  at  a  distance  the  child  stand- 
ing upon  the  terrace  awaiting  us,  clean  and 

[42] 


THE    MIRACLE    OF    THE    FLOWERS 

wholesome  in  a  fresh  white  frock,  and  bearing 
a  large  bouquet  of  her  favorite  pansies  in  her 
hand.  As  we  approached  she  ran  to  meet  us 
and  extended  the  pansies  to  my  wife,  saying: — 
"Mamma,  see  these  lovely  pansies!  I  have 
picked  them  for  you  from  my  pansy-bed." 

My  wife  thanked  the  child  and  kissed  her, 
and  we  went  upstairs  to  our  room  together  to 
prepare  for  supper  that  was  then  about  to  be 
served.  A  vase  stood  on  the  shelf  at  one  side 
of  the  room,  and  in  this,  first  partly  filling  it 
with  water,  I  placed  the  bunch  of  pansies. 

After  supper  I  suggested  to  my  wife  that  we 
should  call  upon  some  relatives  who  lived  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  away,  and  went  with  her  to 
our  room  while  she  made  her  preparations  for 
our  excursion.  While  waiting  for  her  I  took 
from  the  shelf  the  vase  containing  the  pansies, 
and  we  examined  and  commented  upon  them  for 
some  time;  then,  her  toilette  being  completed, 
I  restored  the  vase  and  flowers  to  their  former 
position,  and  we  left  the  room,  and  immediately 
thereafter  the  house,  together. 

We  found  our  friends  at  home  and  spent  a 
pleasant  evening  with  them,  leaving  on  our 
return  at  about  ten  o'clock.  The  night  was 
warm  and  perfectly  calm,  and,  as  there  was  no 

[43] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

moon,  the  way  was  dark  save  where,  here  and 
there,  a  street  lamp  threw  about  its  little  circle 
of  light.  As  we  turned  into  the  street  which 
led  to  my  father's  house  we  passed  under  a 
row  of  maple  trees  whose  heavy  foliage  made 
the  darkness  even  more  profound  than  we  had 
known  it  elsewhere,  and  beside  a  high  hedge 
which  enclosed  the  spacious  grounds  of  a  man- 
sion that  stood  at  the  corner  of  the  two  high- 
ways. This  hedge  extended  for  a  distance  of 
about  fifty  yards,  and  as  many  feet  beyond  the 
point  where  it  terminated  a  lighted  street  lamp 
dimly  illumined  the  pathway.  We  were  at  a 
point  about  midway  of  the  hedge  when  my  wife, 
who  was  the  nearer  to  it,  suddenly  stopped  and 
exclaimed:  "Was  it  you  that  gave  that  pull 
at  my  shawl?"  and  readjusted  the  garment — a 
light  fleecy  affair — which  I  at  once  observed  was 
half  off  her  left  shoulder. 

"Why,  no,"  I  replied,  "I  did  not  touch  your 
shawl.  What  do  you  mean?" 

"I  mean,"  she  answered,  "that  I  felt  a  hand 
seize  my  shawl  and  try  to  draw  it  away  from 


me." 


I  pointed  out  the  fact  that  I  could  not  well 

have  reached  her  shawl  on  the  side  on  which 

it  had  been  disarranged,  and  suggested  that  it 

might  have  caught  upon  a  projecting  twig;  but 

[44] 


THE    MIRACLE    OF    THE    FLOWERS 

although  she  accepted  this  explanation  as 
reasonable  she  still  insisted  that  she  had  the 
consciousness  of  some  person  having  laid  a  hand 
upon  her. 

After  a  few  moments  we  went  on,  and  had 
left  the  hedge  behind  us  and  were  within  a  few 
feet  of  the  street  lamp,  when  my  wife  stopped 
a  second  time,  declaring  that  her  shawl  had 
been  seized  again.  Sure  enough,  the  garment 
was  as  before,  lying  half  off  her  shoulder,  and 
this  time  obviously  not  because  of  any  project- 
ing twig,  since  we  were  in  a  perfectly  clear 
space,  and  could  look  about  us  over  an  area  of 
several  yards  in  every  direction.  This  we  did, 
puzzled  but  not  alarmed  at  the  twice-recurring 
incident;  then,  on  a  sudden,  my  wife  seized  my 
arm  with  a  convulsive  grip,  and,  raising  her 
eyes  until  I  thought  she  was  looking  at  the  light 
in  the  street  lamp  before  us,  whispered: 
"Heavens  I  Do  you  see  that?' 

I  followed  the  direction  of  her  gaze,  but 
could  see  nothing,  and  told  her  so,  in  the  same 
breath  asking  her  what  she  meant. 

"It  is  Minnie!"  she  gasped  (thus  uttering 
the  name  of  my  dead  wife)  "and  she  has  her 
hands  full  of  flowers!  Oh,  Minnie,  Minnie, 
what  are  you  doing?"  and  hid  her  face  in  her 
hands.  I  clasped  her  in  my  arms,  thinking  she 

[45] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

was  about  to  faint,  and  gazed  fearfully  above 
us  in  a  vain  effort  to  discern  the  declared  ap- 
parition— and  at  the  same  moment  I  felt  a 
shower  of  soft  objects  strike  upon  my  upturned 
face  and  upon  my  straw  hat,  and  saw  against 
the  light  before  me  what  seemed  like  blossoms 
floating  downward  to  the  ground. 

As  soon  as  I  could  quiet  my  wife's  agitation 
and  induce  her  to  look  again  for  the  appearance 
which  she  believed  she  had  beheld,  but  which 
she  told  me  had  now  vanished,  I  made  a  search 
upon  the  sidewalk  for  the  objects  whose  fall  I 
had  both  felt  and  seen.  They  were  plainly  evi- 
dent, even  in  the  dim  light,  and  I  gathered  up 
a  number  of  them  and  carried  them  under  the 
lamp  for  examination.  •  They  were  pansies, 
freshly  gathered,  and  with  their  leaves  and 
stems  damp,  as  if  just  taken  from  water. 
Hastening  to  the  house,  we  went  directly  to  our 
room,  and  lighting  the  gas  looked  eagerly 
toward  the  shelf  where  we  had  left  the  vase 
filled  with  pansies  some  three  hours  before.  The 
vase  was  there,  half-filled  with  water,  but  not 
a  single  flower  was  standing  in  it. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday  and  all  the  family 
went  to  morning  service  at  the  church.  As  my 
wife  and  I,  with  our  daughter  between  us  and 

[46] 


THE    MIRACLE    OF    THE    FLOWERS 

following  my  father  and  mother  at  some  dis- 
tance, reached  the  scene  of  our  adventure  on 
the  previous  night,  we  saw  lying  on  the  side- 
walk a  half-dozen  pansies  which  we  had  evi- 
dently overlooked,  owing  to  the  dim  light  in 
which  we  had  gathered  up  the  others.  At  sight 
of  them  the  little  girl  dropped  my  hand,  to 
which  she  was  clinging,  and  with  a  cry  of  sur- 
prise ran  to  pick  them  up. 

"Why,"  she  exclaimed,  "how  did  these  come 
here?  They  are  the  pansies  I  picked  for 
mamma  yesterday  from  my  pansy  bed!" 

"Oh,  no,  dear,"  I  said;  "these  are  probably 
some  other  pansies ;  how  can  you  tell  they  came 
from  your  bed?" 

"Why,"  she  replied,  "I  know  every  one  of 
my  pansies,  and  this  one" — holding  up  a  blos- 
som that  was  of  so  deep  and  uniform  a  purple 
as  to  appear  almost  black — "I  could  tell  any- 
where, for  there  was  no  other  in  the  bed  like 
it" 

So  she  collected  all  the  scattered  flowers  and 
insisted  on  carrying  them  to  church,  and  on 
returning  home  they  were  replaced,  with  their 
fellows,  in  the  vase  from  which  they  had  been 
so  mysteriously  transferred  the  night  before. 

It  has  been  my  purpose,  in  preparing  these 
[47] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

stories  for  publication,  not  to  permit  myself  to 
be  led  into  any  attempt  to  explain  them,  or  even 
to  embellish  them  with  comment,  and  thus  per- 
haps weaken  what  I  desire  to  present  as  a  plain 
statement  of  fact — yet  this  incident  of  the 
pansies  seems  to  me  (although  for  quite  per- 
sonal reasons)  so  touching,  and  so  tender  in 
its  suggestions,  that  I  cannot  forbear  a  word 
or  two  concerning  it.  In  thus  indulging  myself 
I  am  aware  that  the  reader  may  think  he  finds 
a  contradiction  of  the  statement  I  have  made 
in  the  preface  of  this  book  as  to  my  non-com- 
mittal attitude  regarding  Spiritualism.  On  this 
point  I  can  only  say  that  while  I  am  not  con- 
vinced as  to  the  origin  of  the  phenomenon,  I 
should  find  much  comfort  if  I  could  with  as- 
surance attribute  it  to  a  spiritualistic  source. 
There  are  doubtless  many  who  will  thus  refer 
it,  and  I  write  these  lines  in  sympathy,  even  if 
somewhat  doubtingly,  with  their  point  of  view. 
In  every  way  this  event  stands  unique  in  my 
experience — in  place  of  its  occurrence,  and  in 
all  its  circumstances.  The  town  was  the  scene 
of  my  youthful  wooing — the  street  one  in  which 
my  fiancee  and  I  had  walked  and  talked  a  thou- 
sand times  on  the  way  between  my  home  and 
hers.  To  this  town,  and  to  this  familiar  path, 
the  new  wife  had  come  with  me,  and  with  us 


THE  MIRACLE  OF  THE  FLOWERS 

both  the  child  of  her  love  and  sacrifice.  Is 
there  no  significance,  is  there  no  consolation,  not 
only  to  myself  but  to  others  who  have  been 
bereaved,  in  this  episode?  The  loving  gift  of 
flowers  to  her  new  guardian  by  the  innocent 
and  unconscious  child;  the  approval  of  the 
offering  through  its  repetition,  by  the  apparent 
spirit  of  the  mother  that  bore  her! — these 
things  may  mean  nothing,  yet  in  me  whom  they 
approached  so  nearly  they  have  strengthened 
the  hope  that  lives  in  every  human  hearc,  that 
the  flame  of  our  best  and  purest  affections  shall 
survive  the  seeming  extinguishment  of  the 
grave. 

Science,  to  be  sure,  has  its  explanation,  and 
in  fairness  that  explanation  should  be  heard. 
To  quote  an  eminent  authority  who  has  favored 
me  with  his  views  on  the  subject: — "The  power 
that  moved  the  pansies  was  a  psychic  force  in- 
herent in  the  human  personality  [of  your  wife] 
and  exercised  without  the  knowledge  or  co- 
operation of  the  objective  self."  (Dr.  John  D. 
Quackenbos.) 

In  other  words,  it  was  not  the  spirit  of  the 
dead  wife  that  lifted  the  pansies  and  showered 
them  upon  us,  but  what  we  must  call,  for  want 
of  a  better  term,  the  living  wife's  "subliminal 
self."  The  vision  that  appeared  and  seemed  to 

[49] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

be  casting  the  flowers  was  a  freak  of  the 
psychical  consciousness — there  was  no  appari- 
tion save  in  my  wife's  overwrought  imagination. 

To  quote  again:  "But  that  does  not  pre- 
clude the  possibility  of  the  levitation  of  the 
pansies,  which  levitation  was  accomplished  by 
the  lady  herself,  however  ignorant  of  the  opera- 
tion of  this  psychic  force  she  used  objectively. 
The  fact  that  she  was  thus  objectively  ignorant 
would  be  no  obstacle  to  her  subjective  mind 
using  in  the  objective  earth-life  her  own  super- 
sensible attributes  and  powers." 

The  principal  objection  to  this  argument 
seems  to  me  to  lie  in  this : — the  pansies  did  not 
first  fall  upon  us,  and  thus,  by  suggestion  or 
otherwise,  so  excite  my  wife's  imagination  that 
she  thought  she  saw  the  apparition;  the  appari- 
tion was  first  manifest,  and  the  rain  of  flowers 
followed.  That  is  to  say,  an  appearance  of  the 
immaterial  was  followed  by  a  tangible  mani- 
festation— there  was  nothing  imaginary  about 
that.  Had  the  conditions  been  reversed,  the 
fall  of  the  flowers  might  very  well  have  excited 
apprehension  of  the  vision — but  I  cannot  see 
where  there  was  any  place  for  fancy  in  ex- 
perience of  this  incident. 

The  second  episode  to  which  I  have  alluded 
[SO] 


THE    MIRACLE    OF    THE    FLOWERS 

in  the  opening  paragraph  of  this  narrative  oc- 
curred in  the  following  winter,  and  was,  in  a 
certain  sense,  a  sequel  to  the  first.  Business 
took  me  from  my  home  in  Boston,  and  during 
my  absence  my  wife  and  daughter  were  invited 
by  the  lady  I  have  already  mentioned  to  spend 
a  few  days  at  her  house  in  Brookline.  Her  hus- 
band was  away  on  one  of  his  frequent  business 
trips,  leaving  with  his  wife  her  widowed  sister, 
Mrs.  Myra  Hall,  his  daughter,  a  girl  of 
eighteen,  and  a  young  German  lady,  Fraulein 
Botha,  whose  acquaintance  the  hostess  had 
formed  abroad,  and  who  at  the  time  was  at  the 
head  of  the  Department  of  Instruction  in  Art 
at  Wellesley  College.  All  these  were  witnesses, 
with  my  wife,  of  the  remarkable  event  which  I 
am  about  to  describe. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  second  day  of  my 
wife's  visit,  the  child  became  suddenly  ill,  and 
as  evening  drew  on  exhibited  rather  alarming 
symptoms  of  fever.  A  physician  was  sum- 
moned who  prescribed  remedies,  and  directed 
that  the  patient  should  be  put  to  bed  at  once. 
This  was  done,  and  at  about  ten  o'clock  my 
wife,  accompanied  by  the  ladies  I  have  men- 
tioned, went  quietly  upstairs  to  observe  her  con- 
dition before  retiring  for  the  night  themselves. 
The  upper  floor  was  reached  by  a  very  broad 

[51] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

staircase  which  branched  near  the  top  to  give 
access  to  the  chambers  upon  a  wide  hall,  from 
every  part  of  which  one  could  look  down  over 
a  railing  upon  the  floor  below — and  the  room 
in  which  the  child  lay  was  about  half-way 
around  this  hall  on  the  left-hand  side. 

The  ladies  entered  the  chamber  and  the 
hostess  turned  up  the  gas,  showing  the  child 
peacefully  slumbering  and  with  forehead  and 
hands  moist  with  a  wholesome  perspiration, 
although  her  face  was  still  somewhat  flushed. 
As  the  night  was  a  bitter  cold  one  in  mid-Janu- 
ary, the  mistress  of  the  house  suggested  that 
some  additional  covering  should  be  placed  upon 
the  bed,  and  produced  from  another  room  an 
eider-down  counterpane,  covered  with  scarlet 
silk,  which  was  carefully  arranged  without 
waking  the  sleeper.  All  then  left  the  room  and 
started  downstairs  again,  the  hostess  being  the 
last  to  go  out,  after  lowering  the  gas  until  it 
showed  only  a  point  of  light. 

They  were  near  the  bottom  of  the  staircase 
when  my  wife  suddenly  cried  out:  "Oh,  there 
is  Minnie !  She  passed  up  the  stairs  by  me,  all 
in  white,  and  has  gone  into  the  room!  Oh,  I 
know  something  dreadful  is  going  to  happen !" 
— and  she  rushed  frantically  to  the  upper  floor, 

[5*] 


THE    MIRACLE    OF    THE    FLOWERS 

followed  by  the  others  in  a  body.  At  the  half- 
open  door  of  the  child's  room  they  all  stopped 
and  listened,  not  daring  for  the  moment  to 
enter,  but  no  sound  came  from  within.  Then, 
mustering  up  courage  and  clinging  to  each 
others'  hands,  they  went  softly  in,  and  the 
hostess  turned  up  the  gas.  With  one  accord 
they  looked  toward  the  bed,  and,  half-blinded 
by  the  sudden  glare  of  the  gaslight,  could  not 
for  a  moment  credit  what  their  eyes  showed 
them — that  the  sleeping  child  was  lying  under 
a  coverlet,  not  of  scarlet,  as  they  had  left  her 
hardly  a  minute  before,  but  of  snowy  white. 
Recovering  from  their  astonishment,  an  exami- 
nation revealed  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon. 
The  scarlet  eider-down  counterpane  was  in  its 
place,  but  completely  covered  with  pure  white 
lilies  on  long  stalks,  so  spread  about  and  lying 
in  such  quantities  that  the  surface  of  the  bed 
was  hidden  under  their  blooms.  By  actual 
count  there  were  more  than  two  hundred  of 
these  rich  and  beautiful  blossoms  strewn  upon 
the  coverlet,  representing  a  moderate  fortune 
at  that  time  of  year,  and  probably  unprocurable 
though  all  the  conservatories  in  the  city  had 
been  searched  for  them. 

They   were  carefully  gathered   and  placed 
about  the  house  in  vases,  jugs,  and  every  other 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

receptacle  that  could  be  pressed  into  service  to 
hold  them,  filling  the  rooms  for  several  days 
with  their  fragrance  until,  like  other  flowers, 
they  faded  and  died. 


[54] 


THE  MIDNIGHT  HORSEMAN 


THE    MIDNIGHT   HORSEMAN 

ON  a  brilliant  moonlit  evening  in  August, 
1885,  a  considerable  party  of  friends  and  more 
or  less  intimate  acquaintances  of  the  hostess 
assembled  at  the  summer  cottage  of  Mrs. 
Thaxter  at  Appledore  Island,  Isles  of  Shoals. 
Included  in  the  company  were  the  then  editor 
of  the  New  York  Herald,  Rev.  Dr.  Hepworth, 
— also  well  known  as  a  prominent  divine  and 
pulpit  orator — two  of  the  leading  musicians  of 
Boston  (Julius  Eichberg  and  Prof.  John  K. 
Paine) — of  whom  one  occupied  a  chair  in  Har- 
vard University, — and,  among  others,  my  wife 
and  myself.  The  cottr.ge  was  the  charming 
resort  which  the  visitor  would  be  led  to  expect 
from  the  well-known  refinement  and  artistic 
taste  of  its  occupant,  and  its  interior  attractions 
might  well  have  been  suggested  even  to  the 
casual  passer-by  who  looked  upon  its  wonder- 
ful flower-garden,  wherein  seeds  of  every 
variety  had  in  spring  been  scattered  broadcast 
and  in  profusion,  and  now,  as  autumn  ap- 
proached, had  developed  into  a  jungle  of 
blooms  of  every  conceivable  color. 

[57] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

We  had  some  music,  as  I  remember,  and 
after  that  an  interesting  conversation,  which,  in 
consequence  of  the  many  varied  and  brilliant 
intellects  there  assembled,  took  a  wide  range, 
coming  around  finally — I  do  not  recall  by  what 
steps — to  occultism,  clairvoyance,  and  the  phe- 
nomena of  so-called  "Spiritualism."  In  the 
course  of  the  discussion  of  this  topic,  the  editor 
interested  us  by  a  humorous  account  of  some 
recent  experiences  of  his  own  in  "table-tipping" 
and  "communications"  by  rappings — and  inci- 
dentally remarked  that  he  believed  any  assembly 
of  persons  who  wished  could  experience  similar 
phenomena,  even  though  none  of  them  pos- 
sessed what  it  is  usual  to  describe  as  "medium- 
istic"  powers.  Some  one  else  then  suggested 
that,  as  our  company  seemed  to  fulfil  this  con- 
dition, the  present  might  be  a  favorable  time 
to  test  the  theory — whereupon  we  all  pro- 
ceeded to  the  adjoining  dining-room  with  the 
view  of  making  experiment  by  means  of  the 
large  dinner  table  that  stood  in  the  middle  of 
it. 

(I  may  here  state  that  although  my  wife  had 
already  had  some  abnormal  experiences,  only 
Mrs.  Thaxter  and  I  were  acquainted  with  the 
fact,  and  even  these  had  come  to  her  unsought 
in  every  instance.) 

[58] 


I 
THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

Somewhat  to  our  disappointment,  the  table 
failed  to  show  itself  susceptible  to  any  "in- 
fluence" other  than  the  law  of  gravitation,  but 
remained  insensible  and  immovable,  even 
though  we  sat  about  it  under  approved  "con- 
ditions" for  half  an  hour  or  so — lights  lowered, 
and  our  imposed  hands  touching  each  other  in 
order  to  form  upon  it  an  uninterrupted  "cir- 
cuit." We  finally  tired  of  this  dull  sport,  turned 
up  the  lights,  and  pushing  back  our  chairs  from 
the  table,  fell  into  general  conversation. 

Hardly  had  we  done  so,  when  my  wife  sud- 
denly exclaimed: — "How  strange!  Why,  the 
wall  of  the  room  seems  to  have  been  removed, 
and  I  can  see  rocks  and  the  sea,  and  the  moon- 
light shining  upon  them !"  At  this  interrup- 
tion our  talk  naturally  ceased  abruptly,  and  one 
of  us  asked  her  to  describe  more  in  detail  what 
was  visible  to  her. 

"It  is  growing  stranger  still,"  she  replied. 
"I  do  not  see  the  sea  any  more.  I  see  a  long, 
straight  road,  with  great  trees  like  elms  here 
and  there  on  the  side  of  it,  and  casting  dark 
shadows  across  it.  There  are  no  trees  like  those 
and  no  such  road  near  here,  and  I  cannot  under- 
stand it.  There  is  a  man  standing  in  the  middle 
of  the  road,  in  the  shadow  of  one  of  the  trees. 
Now  he  is  coming  toward  me  and  I  can  see  his 

[59] 


TRUE.  TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

face  in  the  moonlight.  Why !  it  is  John  Weiss !" 
(naming  the  Liberal  clergyman  and  writer 
whom  most  of  us  had  known  in  Boston,  and 
who  had  died  some  five  or  six  years  before) 
"Why,  is  that  you  ?  What  are  you  doing  here, 
and  what  does  this  mean?  He  smiles,  but  does 
not  speak.  Now  he  has  turned  and  gone  back 
into  the  shadow  of  the  tree  again." 

After  a  few  moments'  pause : — "Now  I  can 
see  something  coming  along  the  road  some 
distance  away.  It  is  a  man  on  horseback.  He 
is  riding  slowly,  and  he  has  his  head  bent  and 
a  slouch  hat  over  his  eyes,  so  that  I  cannot  see 
his  face.  Now  John  Weiss  steps  out  of  the 
shadow  into  the  moonlight;  the  horse  sees  him 
and  stops — he  rears  up  in  the  air  and  whirls 
about  and  begins  to  run  back  in  the  direction 
from  which  he  came.  The  man  on  his  back 
pulls  him  up,  lashes  him  with  his  whip,  turns 
him  around,  and  tries  to  make  him  go  forward. 
The  horse  is  terrified  and  backs  again,  trying 
to  break  away  from  his  rider;  the  man  strikes 
him  again,  but  he  will  not  advance. 

"The  man  dismounts  and  tries  to  lead  the 
horse,  looking  about  to  see  what  he  is  fright- 
ened at.  I  can  see  his  face  now  very  clearly — 
I  should  know  him  anywhere !  John  Weiss  is 
walking  toward  him,  but  the  man  does  not  see 

[60] 


THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

him.  The  horse  does,  though,  and  plunges  and 
struggles,  but  the  man  in  strong  and  holds  him 
fast.  Now  John  Weiss  is  so  close  to  the  man 
that  he  must  see  him.  Oh!  Oh!  he  does  see 
him,  and  is  horribly  frightened!  He  steps  back 
but  John  Weiss  does  not  follow — only  points 
his  hand  at  him.  The  man  jumps  on  his  horse 
and  beats  him  fiercely  with  his  whip,  and  the 
two  fly  back  down  the  road  and  disappear  in 
the  distance.  Tell  me,  John  Weiss,  what  it 
all  means?  He  smiles  again  and  shakes  his 
head — now  he  is  gone,  too;  I  can  see  nothing 


more." 


We  were  all  profoundly  impressed  by  this 
graphic  recital  and  spent  some  time  discussing 
what  possible  meaning  the  strange  vision  could 
have;  but  we  were  compelled  to  abandon  all 
efforts  to  elucidate  it,  and  it  was  not  until  some 
seven  months  later  that  the  sequel  to  the  mystery 
was  furnished — a  sequel  that  for  the  moment 
seemed  about  to  offer  an  explanation,  but,  if 
anything,  beclouded  the  matter  even  more 
deeply  than  before. 

Early  in  March  of  the  following  year  a  party 
of  eight  or  ten  persons  was  dining  at  the  house 
of  Mrs.  Candler,  in  Brookline,  already  men- 
tioned in  this  series,  and  after  dinner  went  up  to 
the  sitting-room  of  the  hostess,  upon  the  second 
[61] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

floor.  The  weather  for  a  week  previous  had 
been  warm  and  spring-like,  but  on  the  day  in 
question  a  heavy  snowstorm  had  been  raging, 
which  cleared  at  nightfall,  leaving  a  foot  or  so 
of  snow  upon  the  ground.  Of  the  dinner-party 
only  my  wife  and  I  had  been  at  the  Isles  of 
Shoals  the  previous  summer  when  the  incident 
above  narrated  had  occurred; — but  all  present 
were  acquainted  with  the  circumstance,  which 
had  been  a  frequent  subject  of  conversation 
among  us  at  our  frequent  gatherings  at  one 
another's  houses  during  the  autumn  and 
winter  that  had  followed. 

As  I  sat  near  the  door  and  let  my  eye  wander 
about  the  apartment,  I  idly  noticed,  among  the 
many  souvenirs  of  foreign  travel  which  it  con- 
tained, two  Japanese  vases  set  upon  brackets 
in  opposite  corners,  and  about  six  feet  from  the 
floor.  These  vases  were,  perhaps,  twenty  feet 
apart — the  width  of  the  room.  The  vase  on 
the  bracket  at  my  right  was  empty,  while  the 
other  contained  a  bunch  of  "pussy-willows," 
which  attracted  my  attention  as  the  usual  season 
for  these  growths  had  not  arrived.  I  com- 
mented upon  this  circumstance  to  my  hostess, 
who  replied: — nYes,  it  is  very  early  for  them, 
is  it  not?  I  was  driving  yesterday,  and  was 
surprised  to  see  a  willow-tree  bearing  those 

[62] 


THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

'pussies'  in  a  sheltered  spot  beside  Jamaica 
Pond.  I  had  the  footman  get  down  and  gather 
them,  and  when  I  reached  home  I  put  them  in 
that  vase." 

This  remark,  of  course,  drew  all  eyes  to  the 
bracket  bearing  the  vase  filled  with  the  "pussies" 
— which,  thereupon  and  at  the  instant,  disap- 
peared, leaving  the  vase  in  its  place,  but  quite 
empty;  a  soft  thud  was  heard  as  two  or  three 
of  the  stalks  fell  upon  the  carpet  midway  be- 
tween the  two  brackets,  and  a  rustling  sound  in 
the  right-hand  corner  attracted  the  attention  of 
all  present  to  the  singular  fact  that  the  "pussies" 
were  now  standing  in  the  vase  on  the  second 
bracket  as  quietly  as  if  they  had  been  there  at 
the  outset. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  no  one  in  the  room  was 
within  a  dozen  feet  of  either  of  the  two  vases, 
and  that  neither  of  them  could  be  reached  by 
anyone  who  did  not  stand  upon  a  chair  for  the 
purpose.  Moreover,  the  room  was  brilliantly 
illuminated  by  several  gas-jets.  We  had  been 
accustomed  to  singular  happenings  in  this  par- 
ticular house,  and  consequently  were  amused 
rather  than  startled  by  the  whimsical  nature  of 
this  one.  In  discussing  it  some  one  suggested 
that  peculiar  influences  seemed  to  be  about,  and 
it  was  agreed  to  invite  them  to  further  mani- 

[63] 


TRUE    TALES    OF     THE    WEIRD 

festations  if  possible.  Consequently  the  centre 
of  the  room  was  cleared  and  a  large  table 
moved  into  it — around  which,  after  locking  the 
door  that  led  into  the  hall,  and  extinguishing 
all  the  lights  but  one  (which  also  was  turned 
down  to  a  faint  glimmer),  we  drew  up  our 
chairs  and  awaited  developments.  A  half-hour 
passed  without  anything  whatever  happening — 
whereupon,  deciding  that  conditions  were  un- 
favorable, we  relighted  all  the  gas-jets  and  fell 
into  general  conversation,  although  leaving  the 
table  still  in  its  position  in  the  middle  of  the 
room. 

In  a  few  minutes  our  hostess  said: — "Oh,  by 
the  way,  I  want  you  to  see  the  new  decorations 
I  have  had  placed  in  my  daughter's  room.  You 
know  it  is  her  birthday" — in  fact,  I  believe  that 
evening's  dinner  party  was  in  honor  of  the  event 
— "and  I  have  had  her  room  entirely  refitted, 
since  she  is  no  longer  a  girl,  but  a  young  lady." 

So,  following  her  lead,  we  all  trooped  away 
to  inspect  the  new  arrangement.  In  doing  so 
we  passed  down  the  hall  for  a  distance  of  some 
fifty  feet,  and  entered  the  room  in  question, 
which  was  at  the  front  of  the  house  and  over- 
looked its  extensive  grounds.  The  apartment 
was  decorated  with  all  the  luxury  and  display 
of  taste  that  large  means  and  the  command  of 

[64] 


THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

expert  skill  could  provide,  and  we  spent  some 
time  in  examination  of  its  rich  and  beautiful 
details. 

One  item  that  particularly  attracted  our  at- 
tention was  a  small  but  very  heavy  clock  that 
stood  on  the  mantelpiece,  its  case  of  Japanese 
carved  bronze,  and  its  interior  mechanism 
giving  forth  a  very  peculiarly  musical  and  rapid 
"tick-tock,  tick-tock"  as  its  short  pendulum 
swung  to  and  fro.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  unique  and 
curious  ornament,  and  all  the  members  of  the 
party  admiringly  examined  it — for  my  own 
part,  I  was  so  struck  with  its  rare  character  that 
I  stood  regarding  it  after  the  others  had  left  the 
room,  and  turned  from  it  only  when  our  hostess, 
who  alone  remained,  playfully  inquired  if  I  in- 
tended to  study  the  clock  all  night,  and,  ex- 
tinguishing the  light,  passed  out  into  the  hall 
with  me. 

Returning  to  the  sitting-room,  we  decided  to 
make  some  further  experiment,  and,  again 
extinguishing  the  lights  and  relocking  the  door 
leading  into  the  hall,  seated  ourselves  around 
the  table  as  before.  We  had  not  been  in  this 
position  more  than  a  few  minutes  when  there 
came  a  tremendous  thump  upon  the  table,  like 
the  fall  of  some  heavy  object.  Being  nearest 
to  the  lowered  gas-jet  which  gave  the  only  light 

[65] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

to  the  room,  I  jumped  up  and  turned  it  on  to 
its  full  capacity — whereupon  everyone  present 
saw  standing,  in  the  exact  centre  of  the  table, 
its  "tick-tock,  tick-tock"  ringing  out  sonorously, 
the  carved  bronze  clock  which  we  had  so  re- 
cently inspected  in  the  distant  bedchamber,  and 
which  had  been  passed  in  some  mysterious 
fashion  along  fifty  feet  of  hall  space,  and 
through  a  shut  and  locked  door,  to  astonish  us 
by  its  present  appearance. 

Forming  ourselves  into  a  committee  of  the 
whole,  we  carried  the  clock  back  to  its  former 
place,  which,  it  need  not  be  said,  we  found 
unoccupied — then  returned  to  the  sitting-room, 
where,  with  lowered  lights,  we  discussed  the 
strange  occurrences  of  the  evening.  Although 
curious  to  see  if  any  other  manifestations  would 
occur,  we  made  no  effort  to  invite  them  beyond 
dimming  the  lights,  and  as  we  found  the  room 
had  become  rather  warm  and  close,  we  opened 
the  door  into  the  hall  for  the  sake  of  better 
ventilation.  The  hall  was  only  partially 
lighted,  but  objects  in  it  were  easily  visible  in 
comparison  with  the  almost  total  darkness  that 
shrouded  the  sitting-room.  Our  talk  was  of 
ghosts  and  of  other  subjects  uncanny  to  the  un- 
initiated, and  might  have  seemed  unpleasantly 
[66] 


THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

interesting  to  anyone  listening  to  it  from  the 
hall — as  we  were  afterward  led  to  believe  was 
the  case. 

Directly  facing  the  open  door,  and  the  only 
one  of  the  company  so  seated,  was  my  wife — 
who  suddenly  startled  us  all  by  springing  to 
her  feet  and  crying  out : — "There  he  is !  There 
is  the  man  I  saw  at  the  Isles  of  Shoals  last 


summer!' 


"What  is  it?"  we  inquired;  "an  apparition?" 
"No,  no!"  she  exclaimed;  "it  is  a  living  man! 
I  saw  him  look  around  the  edge  of  the  door 
and  immediately  draw  back  again !  He  is  here 
to  rob  the  house!  Stop  him!  Stop  him!" — 
and  she  rushed  out  into  the  hall  with  the  whole 
company  in  pursuit.  The  servants,  who  by  this 
time  had  gone  to  bed,  were  aroused  and  set  to 
work  to  examine  the  lower  floors,  while  we 
above  searched  every  room,  but  in  each  case 
without  result. 

Next  to  the  sitting-room  was  a  large  apart- 
ment some  thirty  feet  long  by  twenty  wide, 
which  was  used  for  dancing  parties,  and  dinners 
on  occasions  when  many  guests  were  invited. 
It  was  at  the  time  unfurnished,  except,  I  be- 
lieve, that  a  few  chairs  were  scattered  about 
it,  and  along  one  side  was  a  row  of  several 
windows,  before  which  hung  heavy  crimson 

[67] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

draperies  that  completely  covered  them.  We 
lighted  the  gas  in  this  room,  but  a  glance  was 
sufficient  to  show  that  it  was  unoccupied  and 
afforded  no  possible  place  of  concealment.  I 
passed  through  it,  however,  and,  as  I  did  so, 
felt  a  current  of  cold  air,  which  I  immediately 
traced,  by  the  swaying  of  one  of  the  heavy 
curtains,  to  a  window  which  its  folds  covered. 
Going  up  to  the  drapery  and  drawing  it 
aside,  I  saw  that  the  window  behind  it  was  half 
open,  and  on  the  sill  and  the  stone  coping  out- 
side I  perceived,  in  the  several  inches  of  snow 
that  covered  both,  marks  which  showed  the  pas- 
sage of  what  was  evidently  a  human  body. 
Reaching  nearly  to  the  window  was  the  slant- 
ing roof,  formed  by  heavy  plate  glass,  of  the 
conservatory,  which  opened  from  the  dining- 
room  on  the  lower  floor — and  in  the  snow  which 
covered  this  was  a  furrow  which  indicated  that 
someone  had  by  this  means  allowed  himself  to 
slide  from  the  second  story  to  the  ground. 
Further  investigation  below  showed,  by  the 
tell-tale  marks  in  the  snow,  that  the  person  who 
had  thus  escaped  from  the  house,  and  who,  after 
gliding  down  the  glass  roof  of  the  conservatory, 
had  fallen  sprawling  under  it,  had  lost  no  time 
in  picking  himself  up,  and  making  good  his  es- 
cape. The  footsteps  of  a  man  running  with 
[68] 


THE     MIDNIGHT     HORSEMAN 

long  strides  were  traced  through  the  grounds 
to  the  street,  two  hundred  yards  away,  where 
they  were  lost  in  the  confused  tracks  of  the 
public  highway — and  from  that  time  to  the 
present  the  mystery  has  remained  unsolved. 


THE  HAUNTED  BUNGALOW 


THE    HAUNTED    BUNGALOW 

PREFATORY  NOTE 

The  annals  of  crime  contain  few  chapters 
more  lurid  than  those  contributed  to  them  by 
the  record  of  Frederick  Bailey  Deeming,  who 
suffered  the  extreme  penalty  of  the  law  on  the 
scaffold  of  the  Melbourne  (Victoria,  Au- 
stralia) jail  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty-third 
of  May,  in  the  year  one  thousasnd,  eight  hun- 
dred and  ninety-two. 

The  details  of  his  misdeeds,  his  trial,  and 
his  punishment  were  set  forth  by  me  at  the 
time  in  letters  to  the  New  York  Times  and  the 
Boston  Journal — of  which,  as  well  as  of  several 
other  publications,  I  was  accredited  correspon- 
dent during  several  years  of  residence  and 
travel  in  Australasia  and  the  South  Seas. 

In  the  narrative  that  follows,  so  far  as  it 
describes  atrocities  which  shocked  the  whole 
English-speaking  world,  I  have  endeavored  to 
subordinate  particulars  in  the  presentation  of 
a  general  effect;  my  purpose  has  been,  not  to 
picture  horrors,  but  to  suggest  the  strange  and 
abnormal  personality  that  lay  behind  them. 

[73] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

In  regard  to  the  peculiar  manifestations 
which  followed  the  criminal's  execution,  and 
for  which  some  undefined  influence  that  sur- 
vived his  physical  extinction  seemed,  in  part  at 
least,  to  be  responsible,  I  can  advance  no 
opinion. 


[74] 


CHAPTER    I 

THE   CONDEMNED 

WHEN  I  called  upon  the  Colonial  Secretary, 
in  the  Government  Offices  at  Melbourne,  with 
a  request  that  I  might  be  allowed  to  visit  the 
prisoner  as  he  lay  in  jail  awaiting  execution, 
T  was  informed  that  such  permission  was  con- 
trary to  all  precedent. 

I  had  sat  directly  under  the  eye  of  the  culprit 
four  weary  days  while  the  evidence  accumulated 
that  should  take  away  his  life.  I  had  watched 
his  varied  changes  of  expression  as  the  tide  of 
testimony  ebbed  and  flowed,  and  finally  swelled 
up  and  overwhelmed  him.  I  had  heard  against 
him  the  verdict  of  "the  twelve  good  men  and 
true"  who  had  sat  so  long  as  arbiters  of  his 
fate,  and  the  words  of  the  judge  condemning 
him  to  "be  hanged  by  the  neck  until  he  was 
dead,"  and  commending  his  soul  to  the  mercy 
of  a  God  who  seemed  far  aloof  from  the  scheme 
of  human  iustice  so  long  and  so  laboriously 
planned. 

Short  shrift  had  been  allowed  him.  Con- 
demned and  sentenced  on  a  Monday,  the  date 

[75] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

for  his  act  of  expiation  had  been  set  for  the 
early  morning  of  the  Monday  then  a  scant 
three  weeks  away;*  an  appeal  for  a  respite 
had  been  quickly  and  formally  made,  and  as 
quickly  and  formally  disallowed;  the  days 
granted  for  preparation  had  glided  by  with 
portentous  speed,  and  now  but  five  remained 
between  him  and  his  introduction  to  the  gallows 
and  the  cord. 

As  a  special  and  gruesome  favor  I  had  re- 
ceived one  of  the  few  cards  issued  for  the 
execution;  and  it  was  perhaps  due  as  much  to 
this  fact  as  to  that  of  my  newspaper  connections 
(as  already  stated)  that  the  Colonial  Secre- 
tary finally  consented  to  waive  in  my  interest 
the  usual  rule  of  exclusion,  and  handed  me  his 
order  for  my  admission  to  the  jail.  I  cannot 
confess  to  any  high  exultation  when  the  man- 
date of  the  Secretary,  bravely  stamped  with  the 
Great  Seal  of  the  Colony  of  Victoria,  was 
placed  in  my  hands — particularly  as  it  was  ac- 

*This  is  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  English 
law  in  capital  cases : — whereby  a  condemned  prisoner  is 
allowed  two  Sundays  to  live  after  the  pronouncement  of 
his  sentence,  and  is  executed  on  the  morning  following 
the  second.  Thus  Deeming  had  the  longest  respite  possible 
under  the  statute — twenty  days.  The  shortest  lease  of 
life  (fifteen  days)  would  be  allowed  to  a  prisoner  who 
had  been  sentenced  on  Saturday. 

[76] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

companied  by  a  strict  injunction  that  no 
public  account  should  be  given  of  the  inter- 
view. 

"At  least,"  said  the  Colonial  Secretary,  "not 
at  present.  The  trial  has  been  so  sensational, 
the  crimes  traced  home  to  this  unhappy  man 
so  atrocious,  that  popular  feeling  has  risen  to 
such  a  pitch  as  to  make  it  desirable  to  add 
thereto  no  new  occasion  of  excitement.  More- 
over, I  have  refused  many  requests  similar  to 
yours  from  the  local  newspapers;  you  may 
imagine  the  position  I  should  find  myself  in  if 
it  became  known  that  I  had  discriminated  in 
favor  of  a  foreign  journalist — therefore  I  rely 
upon  your  discretion." 

Thus  the  Colonial  Secretary — in  considera- 
tion of  whose  injunction  I  made  no  professional 
use  of  my  opportunity  at  the  time,  and  report 
upon  it  now  only  because  of  its  relation  to  this 
present  record  of  events.  Not  that  I  asseverate 
the  existence  of  such  a  relation,  or  theorize  upon 
it  even  if  it  were,  for  the  sake  of  argument, 
accepted  as  containing  the  nucleus  of  a  mystery 
that,  after  many  years  of  consideration,  re- 
mains a  mystery  still. 

I  was  not  alone  in  my  visit  to  the  condemned 
cell  in  which,  heavily  ironed  and  guarded  day 
and  night  by  the  death-watch,  Frederick  Bailey 

[77] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

Deeming  awaited  his  doom.*  My  wife,  who 
was  included  in  the  warrant  from  the  Colonial 
Secretary,  accompanied  me;  she  who  had  been 
my  companion  in  journeys  that  had  taken  me 
twice  around  the  globe,  and  who  had  shared 
with  me  many  of  the  inexplicable  experiences 
to  which  I  have  alluded  in  my  "Preface;"  and 
who,  seeming  throughout  her  life  more  sensitive 
than  most  of  us  to  occult  forces  that  at  times 
appear  to  be  in  operation  about  us,  has  since 
crossed  the  frontier  of  the  Undiscovered  Coun- 
try, there  to  find,  perhaps,  solution  of  some  of 
the  riddles  that  have  perplexed  both  her  and 
me.  Intensely  human  as  she  was,  and  in  all 
things  womanly,  her  susceptibility  to  weird  and 
uncomprehended  influences  must  always  seem 
a  contradiction — and  the  more  so  since  they 
always  came  upon  her  not  only  without  invita- 
tion, but  even  in  opposition  to  a  will  of  unusual 
force  and  sanity,  which,  until  the  incidents  oc- 
curred that  I  am  about  to  relate,  kept  them 
measurably  in  control. 

*This  was  the  murderer's  real  name,  as  disclosed  by 
investigations  in  England  among  relatives  and  acquaint- 
ances living  there.  His  execution  was,  as  the  warrant 
for  it  recited,  "upon  the  body  of  Albert  Williams,"  this 
being  the  alias  under  which  he  came  to  Australia,  as 
described  later. 

[78] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

A  memento  of  my  interview  with  the  mur- 
derer stands  before  me  on  the  table  as  I  write: 
— a  memento  also  of  my  wife's  skill  in  model- 
ing, on  account  of  which  I  had  with  difficulty 
induced  her  to  be  my  companion  on  my  sinister 
errand — an  impression  in  plaster  of  his  right 
hand;  the  hand  against  which  had  been  proved 
the  "deep  damnation  of  the  taking-off"  of  two 
women  and  four  children,  and  in  whose  lines 
thus  preserved  those  learned  in  such  matters 
profess  to  discern  the  record  of  other  like 
crimes  that  have  been  suspected  of  him,  but 
could  not  be  confirmed.  I  will  not  weary  the 
reader  with  the  histories  that  have  been  read 
to  me  from  this  grisly  document,  and  no  one 
now  may  ever  know  whether  they  be  true  or 
false: — at  all  events  the  hand  that  made  this 
impress  was  duly  found  guilty  of  the  atrocities 
I  have  recorded  against  it,  and  the  price  that 
was  exacted  for  them  will  seem  to  none  ex- 
cessive, and  to  some  a  world  too  small. 

I  remember  being  much  struck  at  the  time 
with  the  interest  which  the  condemned  man 
manifested  in  assisting  me  to  secure  the  record. 
My  warrant  from  the  Colonial  Secretary  in- 
cluded permission  to  obtain  it,  and  the  consent 
of  the  prisoner  followed  promptly  on  the  ask- 
ing. It  came,  in  fact,  with  a  sort  of  feverish 

[79] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

readiness,  and  I  fancied  that  his  mind  found  in 
the  operation  some  brief  respite  from  the 
thoughts  that  his  position,  and  the  swift  ap- 
proach of  his  fate,  forced  upon  him.  He 
regarded  with  intentness  the  moistening  of  the 
plaster,  and  its  manipulation  into  the  proper 
degree  of  consistency;  followed  intelligently 
the  instruction  to  lay  his  hand  with  even  pres- 
sure upon  the  yielding  mass,  and  when  the  cast 
had  hardened,  and  was  passed  through  the  bars 
for  his  inspection,  he  examined  it  with  an  ap- 
pearance of  the  liveliest  satisfaction. 

"Do  those  lines  mean  anything?"  he  asked. 

"Many  think  so,"  I  replied,  "and  even  pro- 
fess to  read  a  record  from  them.  For  myself, 
I  am  ignorant  of  the  art." 

"I  have  heard  of  that,"  he  returned.  "They 
call  it  'palmistry,'  don't  they?  I  wish  you  could 
find  out  whether  they  are  going  to  hang  me  next 
Monday.  But  they'll  do  that,  right  enough. 
I'm  thirty-nine  now,  and  my  mother  always  said 
I  would  die  before  forty.  She  died  a  good 
while  ago — but  she  keeps  coming  back.  She 
conies  every  night,  and  of  late  she  comes  in 
the  daytime,  too.  What  does  she  bother  me 
so  for?  Why  can't  she  leave  me  alone?" 
(glancing  over  his  shoulder.)  "She's  here  now 
— over  there  in  the  corner.  You  can't  see  her? 

[so] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

That's  queer.  Can't  you  see  her?" — address- 
ing the  governor  of  the  jail,  who  accompanied 
me,  and  who  shook  his  head  to  the  question. 
"I  thought  perhaps  you  could.  But  you  don't 
miss  much.  She  ain't  pretty  to  look  at,  crying 
all  the  time  and  wringing  her  hands,  and  saying 
I'm  bound  to  be  hanged !  I  don't  mind  her  so 
much  in  the  daylight,  but  coming  every  night 
at  two  o'clock,  and  waking  me  up  and  torment- 
ing me ! — that's  what  I  can't  stand." 

"Is  this  insanity?"  I  asked  the  governor  as 
I  came  away. 

"I  don't  know  what  it  is,"  he  replied.  "We 
all  thought  at  first  it  was  shamming  crazy,  and 
the  government  sent  in  a  lot  of  doctors  to 
examine  him;  but  he  seemed  sane  enough  when 
they  talked  with  him — the  only  thing  out  about 
him  was  when  he  complained  of  his  mother's 
visits;  just  as  he  did  to  you.  And  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  he  has  a  sort  of  fit  about  two 
o'clock  every  morning,  and  wakes  up  screaming 
and  crying  out  that  his  mother  is  in  the  cell 
with  him;  and  talks  in  a  frightful,  blood- 
curdling way  to  someone  that  nobody  can  see, 
and  scares  the  death-watch  half  out  of  their 
wits.  Insanity,  hallucination,  or  an  uneasy 
conscience — it  might  be  any  of  them;  I  can't 
say.  Whatever  it  is,  it  seems  strange  that  he 
[81] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

always  talks  about  visitations  from  his  mother, 
who,  as  far  as  I  can  learn,  died  quietly  in  her 
bed,  and  never  of  apparitions  of  his  two  wives 
and  four  children  whose  throats  he  cut  with  a 
knife  held  in  the  hand  whose  print  you've  got 
there  under  your  arm.  Perhaps  you  won't  mind 
my  saying  it — but  it  strikes  me  you've  got  a 
queer  taste  for  curiosities.  I  wouldn't  be  able 
to  sleep  with  that  thing  in  the  house." 

I  laughed  at  the  worthy  governor's  com- 
ment; yet,  as  it  turned  out,  his  words  were  preg- 
nant with  prophecy. 


[82] 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    CRIME 

IN  the  month  of  March,  eighteen  hundred 
and  ninety-two,  the  people  of  Melbourne  were 
startled  by  glaring  headlines  in  the  morning 
newspapers  announcing  the  discovery  of  a  mur- 
der in  the  suburb  of  Windsor. 

During  the  historic  "boom"  that  started  into 
life  all  manner  of  activities  in  and  about  the 
Victorian  capital  during  the  middle  and  later 
"eighties,"  a  great  stimulus  to  building  opera- 
tions had  been  felt,  not  only  in  the  city  itself, 
but  also  through  all  the  extensive  district  out- 
lying it.  The  suburb  of  Windsor  enjoyed  its 
share  in  this  evidence  of  prosperity,  and  san- 
guine speculators,  viewing  through  the  glasses 
of  a  happy  optimism  a  rush  of  new  inhabitants 
to  the  fortunate  city,  erected  in  gleeful  haste 
a  multitude  of  dwellings  for  their  purchase  and 
occupancy.  New  streets  were  laid  out  across 
the  former  barren  stretches  of  the  suburb,  and 
lined  on  either  side  by  "semi-detached  villas" — 
imposing  as  to  name,  but  generally  more  or 
less  "jerry-built,"  and  exceedingly  modest  in 

[83] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

their  aspect.*  These  structures  were  of  what 
we  might  now  call  a  standardized  pattern — 
housing  two  families  side  by  side  with  a  divid- 
ing partition  between  them,  and  of  a  single 
story,  with  an  attic  above.  Between  each  two 
connected  dwellings  (which  were  fronted  by  a 
shallow  veranda,  and  contained  three  or  four 
rooms  for  each  resident  family)  ran  a  narrow 
alley,  hardly  wide  enough  for  a  real  separation 
between  one  building  and  the  next,  but  suffi- 
ciently so  to  justify  the  description  of  "semi- 
detached" which  their  inventor,  by  a  happy  in- 
spiration, had  applied  to  them. 

The  "Great  Melbourne  Boom" — as  I  believe 
it  is  still  referred  to  as  distinguishing  it  from 
all  other  "booms,"  of  various  dimensions,  which 
preceded  or  have  followed  it — spent  its  force, 

*This  activity  in  building  (which  is  still  seen  in  con- 
crete form  in  the  palatial  Parliament  Buildings  and  other 
costly  structures  of  Melbourne)  was  largely  inspired  by 
the  published  calculations  of  an  enthusiastic  statistician 
on  the  future  growth  of  the  Colonies : — which  were,  in 
effect,  that  by  1951  their  population  would  be  thirty-two 
millions,  and  by  2001,  one  hundred  and  eighty-nine  mil- 
lions!— some  eighty  per  cent  in  excess  of  that  of  the 
United  States  at  present.  It  speaks  loudly  for  Australian 
enterprise  that  these  Windsor  builders,  as  well  as  many 
others,  took  such  prompt  measures  to  provide  for  this 
increase. 

[84] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

unfortunately,  before  the  hopes  of  the  specu- 
lators who  had  ridden  into  Windsor  on  its 
flood  had  been  realized;  and  amid  the  wreck 
and  flotsam  that  remained  to  mark  its  ebb, 
some  mournful  miles  of  these  "semi-detached 
villas"  were  conspicuous. 

So  complete  was  the  disaster  that  many  of 
the  owners  of  these  properties  paid  no  further 
heed  to  them: — and  it  was  with  an  emotion 
akin  to  surprise  that,  on  a  day  in  the  month 
and  year  above  mentioned,  the  agent  of  a  cer- 
tain house  in  Andrew  street  received  a  visit 
from  a  woman  with  a  view  to  renting  it.  Why 
the  prospective  tenant  should  have  selected  this 
particular  "villa"  out  of  the  scores  of  others 
precisely  like  it  that  lined  both  sides  of  this 
street,  is  not  known — nor  might  she  herself 
have  had  any  definite  reason  for  her  choice. 
Perhaps  it  was  Chance;  perhaps  Providence — 
the  terms  are  possibly  synonymous : — but  at  all 
events  her  action  proved  to  be  the  first  and 
most  important  of  the  threads  that  wove  them- 
selves together  in  a  net  to  entrap,  and  bring 
to  justice,  one  of  the  craftiest  and  most  relent- 
less murderers  of  the  age. 

The  agent,  apprised  by  his  visitor  of  her 
desire  to  examine  the  house,  eagerly  prepared 
to  accompany  her,  but  could  not  find  the  key. 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

A  search  among  his  records  followed;  from 
which  the  fact  resulted  that,  in  the  previous 
December,  he  had  rented  the  house  to  a  gen- 
tlemanly stranger,  who,  in  lieu  of  affording 
references,  had  established  confidence  by  pay- 
ing three  months'  rent  in  advance.  In  the 
prevailing  depression  of  the  local  real  estate 
business  the  agent  had  given  so  little  attention 
to  his  lines  of  empty  properties  that  he  had  not 
since  even  visited  the  house  in  question — the 
more  so  as  the  period  for  which  payment  had 
been  made  was  not  yet  expired.  Assured  by 
his  visitor,  however,  that  the  house  was  cer- 
tainly unoccupied,  he  went  with  her  to  the  door, 
which  he  opened  with  a  master-key  with  which 
he  had  equipped  himself. 

The  house  was  in  good  order  throughout — 
in  fact  it  seemed  never  to  have  been  occupied. 
The  prospective  tenant  inspected  it  carefully 
and  with  approval,  and  could  discover  but  one 
objection;  she  was  sure  she  noticed  a  disagree- 
able odor  in  the  parlor.  Her  companion  (as  is 
natural  to  agents  with  a  house  to  dispose  of) 
failed  to  detect  this : — if  it  existed  it  was  doubt- 
less due  to  the  fact  that  the  house  had  been 
closed  for  some  time;  he  would  have  it  thor- 
oughly aired  and  overhaul  the  drains — after 
which  she  could  call  again.  This  she  agreed  to 
[86] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

do,  gave  the  agent  her  name  and  address,  and 
departed. 

Left  to  himself,  the  agent  began  an  investiga- 
tion. With  senses  quickened,  perhaps,  by  the 
favorable  prospect  of  business,  he  became  aware 
that  the  atmosphere  of  the  parlor  was  un- 
doubtedly oppressive;  and  as  he  moved  about 
in  search  of  the  cause  he  observed  that  near 
the  open  fire-place  it  was  positively  sickening. 
Examining  this  feature  of  the  room  more  care- 
fully, he  discovered  that  Wie  hearth-stone  had 
been  forced  up  at  one  end,  cracking  and 
crumbling  the  cement  in  which  it  had  been  set, 
and  from  the  inch-wide  aperture  thus  formed 
came  forth  a  stench  so  overpowering  that  he 
recoiled  in  horror,  and  gasping  and  strangling, 
staggered  into  the  open  air. 

The  police  authorities  were  notified,  and  a 
mason  was  sent  for  with  his  tools.  The  hearth- 
stone was  wrenched  from  its  place,  and  in  the 
hollow  space  beneath,  encased  in  cement,  knees 
trussed  up  to  chin  and  bound  with  cords,  lay  the 
body  of  a  young  woman — nude  save  for  the 
mantle  of  luxuriant  dark  hair  that  partly 
shrouded  her,  and  with  her  throat  cut  from 
ear  to  ear. 

About  a  week  before  Christmas  of  the  pre- 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

vious  year,  the  North  German  Lloyd  S.  S. 
"Kaiser  Wilhelm  II."  from  Bremen  to  Ply- 
mouth via  the  Suez  Canal  and  Colombo,  de- 
barked its  passengers  at  the  port  of  Melbourne. 
Among  the  second-class  contingent  who  had 
taken  ship  at  Plymouth  were  "Albert  Williams" 
and  his  wife  Emily.  They  had  not  been  long 
married,  and  their  destination  was  understood 
by  their  fellow-passengers  to  be  Colombo;  but 
on  reaching  that  port  they  remained  on  board 
and  continued  to  Melbourne.  It  was  remarked 
that  Mrs.  Williams,  who  up  to  that  time  had 
been  the  life  of  the  company,  fell  thereafter 
under  increasing  fits  of  uneasiness  and  melan- 
choly— until,  at  the  time  of  arrival  at  Mel- 
bourne, she  had  drawn  so  far  aloof  from  her 
former  friends  of  the  passage  that  none  con- 
cerned themselves  regarding  her  plans,  or  even 
final  destination,  in  the  new  land.* 

*This  woman  (nee  Emily  Lydia  Mather)  was  the 
daughter  of  John  and  Dove  Mather,  respected  residents 
of  Rainhill,  a  small  town  near  Liverpool,  England.  To 
this  town  came  Deeming,  under  his  alias  of  "Williams," 
representing  himself  as  an  officer  in  the  Indian  army  who 
had  been  sent  to  England  to  purchase  supplies  therefor. 
This  claim  he  strengthened  by  occasionally  appearing  in 
a  resplendent  uniform — which  seems  to  have  been  of  his 
own  invention — and  reciting  his  many  exploits  "in  the 
imminent  deadly  breach;"  confirming  also  his  free  asser- 

[88] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

tions  of  the  possession  of  large  wealth  of  his  own  by 
liberal  expenditures  in  all  directions.  No  such  splendid 
personage  had  ever  before  been  seen  in  quiet  Rainhill, 
and  the  whole  town  succumbed  to  the  glamor  of  it — in- 
cluding Miss  Mather  and  her  parents,  whose  acquaintance 
the  fascinating  officer  somehow  made,  and  followed  up 
by  a  respectful  but  ardent  courtship  of  the  daughter.  An 
engagement  between  the  pair  was  soon  announced  and 
a  valuable  diamond  ring,  as  well  as  other  gifts  of  jewelry 
and  rich  attire,  was  bestowed  by  the  prospective  bride- 
groom upon  the  bride-to-be : — and  although  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  wedding  was  announced  for  so  early  a  date 
as  to  cause  some  unfavorable  gossip,  the  fact  was  con- 
doned in  view  of  the  military  necessity  of  a  speedy 
return  to  India. 

At  this  point  Williams — to  use  the  name  by  which  he 
was  then  known — encountered  what  to  any  less  bold  and 
unscrupulous  villain  would  have  been  a  decided  check: — 
this  in  the  form  of  a  letter  from  his  then  living  legal 
wife,  whom,  with  his  four  children  by  her,  he  had  some 
time  before  deserted,  and  who — in  some  manner  unknown 
— had  now  traced  him  to  Rainhill.  This  letter,  it  is 
believed,  announced  her  intention  of  descending  upon  him : 
— at  any  rate,  with  characteristic  audacity,  he  gave  out 
the  information  that  his  sister  and  her  children  were 
coming  to  live  in  Rainhill,  and  that  he  had  received  a 
letter  asking  him  to  rent  a  house  for  them.  He  secured 
a  house  accordingly;  but  expressed  dissatisfaction  with 
the  somewhat  worn  wooden  floor  of  the  kitchen — and  as 
the  owner  demurred  to  undertake  the  expense  of  a  cement 
floor,  Williams  said  he  knew  about  such  things,  and 
would  do  the  job  himself,  and  ordered  the  necessary  ma- 
terials and  tools.  When,  and  by  what  means,  the  woman 
and  children  arrived  in  Rainhill,  seems  to  be  somewhat 
of  a  mystery: — that  they  did  arrive  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  after  the  Windsor  murder  had  come  to  light,  and 

[89] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

the  identity  of  the  victim  was  discovered  by  a  curious 
chain  of  circumstances  too  long  to  find  place  in  this  nar- 
rative, the  skilfully-laid  cement  floor  with  which  the  old 
wooden  floor  had  been  replaced  was  torn  up,  and  the 
half -decapitated  bodies  of  the  five  were  found  embedded 
in  it.  Those  who  are  curious  in  such  matters  may  see 
this  tragedy  depicted  at  Madame  Toussaud's,  London. 

No  such  change,  however,  was  noted  in  the 
demeanor  of  her  husband.  He  was  well  to 
the  fore  in  all  the  interests  and  amusements 
that  offer  themselves  on  shipboard,  rallied  his 
wife  in  no  very  refined  or  considerate  terms 
upon  her  growing  depression,  and  devoted  most 
of  his  spare  time  to  a  pet  canary,  which  he  had 
brought  aboard  in  an  elaborate  gilt  cage;  keep- 
ing it  constantly  near  him  on  deck  by  day,  and 
at  night  sharing  with  it  his  stateroom.* 

A  month's  association  with  him  had  not  in- 
creased the  liking  of  his  fellow-voyagers.  The 
compulsory  intimacies  engendered  by  a  long 
journey  by  sea  afford  a  trying  test  of  character, 
and  to  it  the  temperament  of  the  so-called 

*This  detail — of  a  murderer  carrying  about  with  him 
a  canary  as  a  companion — is  effectively  employed  by  the 
late  Frank  Norris  in  his  California  novel,  "McTeague." 
As  that  story  was  published  in  1903.  eleven  years  after 
the  execution  of  Deeming, — he,  like  McTeague,  a  wife- 
murderer, — the  source  of  Norris'  idea  would  seem 
obvious. 

[90] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

Albert  Williams  failed  satisfactorily  to  respond. 
Strange  and  contradictory  moods  were  noticed 
in  him.  At  times  he  was  morose  and  "grouchy," 
at  times  feverishly  jovial  and  even  hilarious, 
and  the  transition  from  one  to  the  other  of 
these  states  of  mind  was  often  startlingly 
abrupt.  He  seems,  indeed,  to  have  "got  on  the 
nerves"  of  all  his  associates  on  the  voyage — 
and  so  at  length  it  happened  that  when  he  went 
ashore,  carrying  the  cage  and  canary  solicitously 
in  his  hand  and  followed  by  his  silent  and  sad- 
faced  wife,  both  passengers  and  officers  were  at 
one  in  the  aspiration  that  they  might  never  see 
his  sort  again. 

Repairing  to  a  "Coffee-Palace" — by  which 
sounding  title  temperance  hotels  in  Australia 
are  identified — the  couple  spent  some  days  in 
its  respectable  retirement;  then  their  belongings 
were  entrusted  to  a  carrying-company,  and  were 
by  it  conveyed  to  the  "semi-detached  villa"  in 
Windsor.  The  canary,  chirping  and  fluttering 
joyously  in  its  cage,  which  was  promptly  hung 
in  the  veranda,  excited  for  several  days  the  mild 
interest  of  the  neighbors  and  a  few  casual 
passers-by — but  of  the  people  in  the  house  very 
little  was  seen.  Now  and  then  a  gentleman  in 
smoking-jacket  and  embroidered  velvet  cap  was 
observed  in  the  veranda,  feeding  and  chirruping 

[9'] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

to  the  canary,  but  his  companion  seems  to  have 
kept  herself  in  complete  seclusion.  Her  mur- 
der may,  indeed,  have  followed  swiftly  upon 
her  entrance  into  the  house;  however  that  may 
be,  some  ten  days  later  the  canary  was  no  longer 
seen  in  the  veranda,  a  carrier  came  with  his 
cart  and  took  away  a  quantity  of  trunks  and 
boxes,  and  as  he  deliberately  drove  away  his 
employer  kept  pace  with  him  on  the  sidewalk, 
jauntily  swinging  the  cage  with  its  feathered 
occupant  in  his  hand. 

The  trunks  and  boxes  were  taken  to  an  auc- 
tion-room in  Melbourne,  where,  after  due  ad- 
vertisement, their  contents  were  offered  for 
public  sale;  women's  garments  and  jewelry,  for 
the  most  part,  and  heterogeneous  odds  and 
ends.  The  owner  of  these  properties  was  pres- 
ent when  the  sale  took  place,  and  seemed  much 
interested  in  their  disposition: — but  when  the 
canary  and  its  cage  were  offered  he  suddenly 
declared  that  he  would  not  sell  them,  and  when 
the  auction  closed  took  them  away  with  him. 
He  subsequently  appeared  in  the  town  of  Sale, 
several  hundred  miles  away,  and  at  other  remote 
localities — perhaps  with  the  idea  of  misleading 
possible  pursuit  or  for  some  other  purpose  un- 
known:— but  in  all  his  wanderings  he  took  the 
canary  with  him,  and  by  his  devotion  to  it  at- 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

tracted  an  attention  to  himself  which  had  much 
to  do  with  his  identification  when  he  was  finally 
apprehended. 

Returning  to  Melbourne,  where  he  had 
before  assumed  the  new  alias  of  "Baron  Swan- 
ston,"  he  finally  disposed  of  the  cage  and  the 
canary  to  the  auctioneer  of  his  former  acquaint- 
ance. Then  he  disappeared  as  completely  as 
though  the  earth  had  opened  and  engulfed  him 
— his  crime  successfully  committed  and  unsus- 
pected, his  very  name  unknown,  his  tracks  as 
completely  covered  as  was  the  nearly  decapi- 
tated body  of  his  victim  beneath  the  cemented 
hearthstone  of  the  house  at  Windsor. 

But  even  then  the  mysterious  power  of 
Chance — or  Providence — was  at  work  to  his 
undoing.  A  peculiarity  of  many  Australian 
dwellings — a  peculiarity  which  the  hastily-con- 
structed "villas"  in  Windsor  shared — is  found 
in  the  fact  that  they  have  no  cellars.  This 
assists  the  work  of  rapid  building,  so  important 
when  a  "boom"  is  on: — so  the  ground  upon 
their  sites  had  simply  been  levelled,  a  surface 
of  cement  laid,  and  the  buildings  set  above  it 
upon  a  layer  of  beams  and  brickwork.  Nothing 
could  be  easier,  under  such  a  principle  of  con- 
struction, than  to  remove  the  hearth-stone,  dig 
a  grave  under  it  through  the  thin  layer  of 

[93] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

cement  and  into  the  soil  below,  conceal  the 
body  therein,  restore  the  earth  to  its  place, 
and  fix  the  stone  in  position  again. 

What  emotion  the  murderer  may  have  felt 
when,  after  excavating  under  the  cement  to  the 
depth  of  about  eighteen  inches,  his  tools  struck 
upon  solid  rock,  and  he  could  dig  no  further, 
may  be  left  to  the  imagination.  Perhaps  he 
felt  no  emotion  whatever,  not  appreciating  the 
fatal  nature  of  this  check  to  his  plans.  At  all 
events  he  had  no  choice  but  to  accept  the  situa- 
tion, crowd  the  body  into  the  shallow  space, 
and  by  pouring  cement  about  it  and  the  cover- 
ing hearth-stone  insure  the  lasting  secrecy  of 
the  crime.  He  may  have  been  ignorant,  too,  of 
the  enormous  expansive  power  of  the  gases 
released  by  decomposition,  which  under  ordi- 
nary conditions  might  have  been  absorbed  by 
the  covering  and  underlying  soil: — here,  how- 
ever, with  solid  rock  below,  they  struggled  in 
their  close  confinement  until  their  barrier  at 
its  weakest  point  gave  way,  and  forcing  up  the 
hearth-stone  disclosed  to  the  world  the  horror 
that  it  had  concealed. 

And  here  is  the  strangest  circumstance  of 
all.  Although  it  had  been  known  to  a  few  sur- 
veyors and  builders,  and  to  certain  owners  of 
buildings  that  had  been  erected,  that  a  large 
[94] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

part  of  the  land  on  which  the  suburb  was  built 
rested  upon  a  rock  formation,  examinations 
that  were  made  subsequent  to  the  discovery  of 
the  murder  showed  that  at  no  point  did  this 
impenetrable  foundation  approach  nearly  to  the 
surface  of  the  soil,  save  under  this  particular 
house  of  the  tragedy!  Ages  ago  this  flat  table 
of  stone  had  been  laid  down — and  to  the  dwell- 
ing fortuitously  built  upon  it,  with  hundreds  of 
others  lying  empty  about  it  for  him  to  choose, 
the  murderer  had  been  guided  across  fifteen 
thousand  miles  of  sea,  there  to  prepare  for  him- 
self detection  not  only  for  one  crime,  but  for 
the  other  even  more  heinous  which  had  so 
briefly  preceded  it. 


[95] 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    FLIGHT   AND    CAPTURE 

PROMINENT  among  the  many  commonplaces 
current  among  men  is  the  one  that  "truth  is 
stranger  than  fiction,"  and  the  other  that  Life, 
in  building  up  her  dreams,  employs  "situations" 
which  the  boldest  playwright  would  hesitate  to 
present  upon  the  stage.  Yet  the  lines  that  Life 
lays  down  for  her  productions  are,  in  the  main, 
closely  followed  by  those  who  are  ranked  as 
among  the  world's  greatest  dramatists.  She, 
like  them,  leads  up  to  a  climax  by  a  mass  of 
incidents  that  may  severally  be  trivial,  but  com- 
bine together  with  tremendous  weight;  she  fol- 
lows farce  with  tragedy,  and  lightens  tragedy 
with  comedy;  she  brings  her  heroes  in  touch 
with  clowns,  her  lovers  with  old  women  and 
comic  countrymen — and  in  the  complexities  of 
her  plots  mingles  them  together  so  bewilder- 
ingly  that  the  wonder  and  interest  of  the  audi- 
ence are  kept  vigorously  alive  until  the  curtain's 
fall. 

So  in  this  sordid  Windsor  tragedy  she  intro- 
duces between  the  first  and  third  acts  a  second, 

[96] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

where  the  tension  is  relaxed  and  the  milder 
interest  of  Romance  appears. 

It  was  not  the  purpose  of  the  murderer  to 
remain  near  the  scene,  or  even  in  the  country, 
of  his  crime: — he  was  a  shrewd  as  well  as 
merciless  villain,  and  he  turned  his  face  towards 
Sydney,  evidently  with  the  intention  of  taking 
a  steamer  then  about  to  sail  for  San  Francisco, 
and  sinking  his  identity  in  the  vast  areas  and 
amid  the  swarming  millions  of  the  United 
States. 

Nemesis  accompanied  him,  but  in  the  disguise 
of  Cupid.  On  the  coastwise  steamer  by  which 
he  traveled  to  Sydney  was  a  young  woman  by 
the  name  of  Rounsfell,  who  was  returning  to 
her  home  in  the  interior  of  New  South  Wales 
from  a  visit  to  her  brother  near  the  border-line 
between  Victoria  and  South  Australia.  She 
was  about  eighteen  years  of  age,  and  from  an 
interview  I  later  had  with  her  I  estimated  her 
as  an  attractive  and  modest  girl,  not  strikingly 
intellectual,  but  of  kindly  disposition  and  af- 
fectionate nature.  To  her  the  fugitive,  intro- 
ducing himself  by  his  latest-assumed  name,  paid 
regardful  court,  and  relieved  the  tedium  of  the 
voyage  by  devoted  attentions;  and  when  the 
boat  arrived  at  Sydney,  where  she  was  to  re- 

[97] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

main  a  few  days,  he  escorted  her  to  one  hotel 
and  saw  to  her  satisfactory  accommodation, 
while  he  himself,  with  admirable  delicacy,  took 
up  quarters  at  another.  During  her  stay  he 
continued  his  attentions  with  equal  respect  and 
assiduity;  his  attitude,,  as  she  told  me  after- 
ward, was  more  like  that  of  an  elder  brother 
than  a  lover — this  attitude  being  confirmed  by 
judicious  advice  and  counsel,  and  even  by  moral 
admonition: — as  when  he  gently  chided  her  for 
her  confessed  fondness  for  dancing,  sagely  im- 
plying that  he  regarded  this  form  of  amuse- 
ment as  one  of  the  most  insidious  wiles  of  the 
Adversary. 

It  was  at  Coogee,  on  the  shores  of  the  beau- 
tiful harbor  of  Sydney,  that  this  chaste  and  im- 
proving courtship  culminated  in  his  asking  her 
to  marry  him.  He  was  a  man  of  wealth,  he 
told  her,  a  mining  engineer  by  profession,  and 
with  several  lucrative  positions  in  Australia  at 
the  moment  waiting  upon  his  selection.  To 
these  practical  considerations  he  added  the  plea 
of  his  devotion.  He  had  "lately  lost  his  wife" 
(delicate  euphemism!)  he  said,  and  stirred  her 
sympathies  by  eloquent  and  tearful  descrip- 
tions of  the  lonely  and  unsatisfactory  life  he 
led  in  consequence  of  this  bereavement — the 
hollowness  of  which  life  he  felt  more  acutely 

[98] 


'THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

than  ever  now  that  she  had  crossed  his  path. 
She  was,  as  I  have  said,  a  tender-hearted  girl, 
and  what  more  natural  than  that  she  should 
willingly  incline  her  ear  to  words  which  every 
woman  loves  to  hear? — the  more  so  when  they 
were  uttered  by  a  man  whose  history  indicates 
him  to  have  inherited  all  the  persuasiveness  of 
the  original  Serpent  in  dealings  with  the  sex, 
and  who,  as  my  interview  with  him  in  the  con- 
demned cell  caused  me  to  remark,  possessed  one 
of  the  sweetest  and  most  sympathetic  voices  I 
ever  heard  in  human  throat. 

It  would  be  no  discredit  to  Miss  Rounsfell 
if  she  had  accepted  him  then  and  there;  but  it 
speaks  well  for  her  prudence  and  self-command 
that  she  asked  for  delay  in  giving  her  answer 
until  she  could  lay  the  matter  before  her 
parents.  To  this  he  promptly  assented,  adding 
the  suggestion  that  he  should  accompany  her 
to  her  home,  and  give  her  friends  an  oppor- 
tunity to  become  acquainted  with  him.  This 
plan  was  carried  out,  and  the  successful  con- 
quest of  the  daughter  was  completed  by  the 
capitulation  of  the  family;  the  engagement  was 
formally  announced,  and  the  joyful  contract 
sealed  by  the  installation  upon  the  hand  of  the 
fiancee  of  the  costly  diamond  ring  so  lately 
worn  by  the  woman  whose  mutilated  body  was 

[99] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

at  the  moment  mouldering  under  the  hearth- 
stone at  Windsor. 

The  ecstasy  of  the  betrothal  inspired  a  con- 
sideration of  ways  and  means  to  hasten  the 
wedding.  The  ardent  lover  pleaded  for  the 
celebration  of  the  nuptials  without  further  ado; 
but  his  more  prudent  mistress  urged  the  pos- 
session of  a  home,  and  definite  employment  as 
surety  of  maintaining  it.  This  point  conceded, 
the  question  arose  as  to  what  particular  sec- 
tion of  the  Colonies  seemed  to  offer  the  most 
attractive  opportunities.  The  bride-elect  ob- 
jected to  New  South  Wales  as  being  too  near 
home  (she  had  always  been  a  home-body,  and 
wished  to  see  the  world)  ;  Victoria,  also,  was 
not  to  her  taste  for  some  other  feminine  but 
conclusive  reason;  Western  Australia  had  just 
begun  to  come  into  notice  as  likely  to  become 
one  of  the  world's  greatest  gold-producers — 
there,  it  seemed  to  her,  was  the  land  of 
promise  for  a  young  and  experienced  mining- 
engineer. 

This  opinion  prevailed,  and  the  fugitive, 
abandoning  any  idea  he  may  have  had  of 
escaping  to  America,  set  out  for  the  new  El 
Dorado;  and  in  a  few  weeks  his  fiancee  was 
cheered  by  a  letter  giving  news  of  his  arrival 
[100] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

at  Southern  Cross — a  mining-camp  some  nun- 
dred  and  fifty  miles  in  the  interior — where  he 
had  secured  the  post  of  manager  for  a  com- 
pany which  owned  a  rich  deposit,  and  where 
he  was  already  preparing  for  her  coming.  Thus 
some  weeks  passed,  until  another  letter  came 
informing  her  that  a  house  had  been  secured 
and  fitted  up  for  her,  and  enclosing  sufficient 
funds  for  her  journey.  She  replied,  fixing  the 
date  of  her  departure  from  Sydney,  and  on 
the  day  appointed  took  train  for  Mel- 
bourne, intending  to  continue  thence  to  Albany 
by  sea. 

Arriving  at  Melbourne  the  following  morn- 
ing— where  by  chance  she  took  a  room  in  the 
same  "Coffee  Palace"  to  which  her  prospective 
bridegroom  had  resorted  upon  his  arrival  from 
England — she  despatched  a  note  to  a  young 
man  who  was  a  long-time  friend  of  her  family, 
and  when  he  called  in  the  evening  went  out 
with  him  for  a  stroll  through  the  city.  As  they 
passed  the  office  of  The  Age  newspaper  on 
Collins  street,  they  saw  an  excited  crowd  sur- 
rounding the  bulletin-board,  and  crossed  the 
roadway  to  read  the  announcement  that  it  bore. 
As  her  eyes  rested  upon  it,  Miss  Rounsfell  gave 
a  piercing  shriek,  and  fell  senseless  upon  the 
ground. 

[101] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

The  announcement  upon  the  board  was 
this: 

"BARON  SWANSTON,  THE  WINDSOR  MURDERER, 
ARRESTED  AT  SOUTHERN  CROSS." 

Taken  to  her  hotel  and  revived  with  diffi- 
culty, she  told  her  sensational  story,  with  which 
the  newspapers  of  the  whole  country  were  filled 
next  day;  then,  broken  and  trembling,  she  re- 
turned to  her  home,  there  to  remain  until  sum- 
moned again  to  Melbourne  to  give  her  testi- 
mony at  the  trial  which  took  place  a  month 
later. 

Most  strangely  had  it  happened  that  by  her 
unwitting  influence  the  criminal  career  of 
Frederick  Bailey  Deeming  had  been  brought  to 
an  end.  Had  she  consented  to  live,  after  her 
anticipated  marriage,  in  New  South  Wales  or 
Victoria,  he  might  never  have  been  appre- 
hended. In  these  two  colonies — except  for  the 
seeming  impossibility  of  the  murdered  body 
being  discovered — he  might  have  come  and 
gone  without  suspicion;  his  only  peril  being  the 
almost  negligible  one  that  some  associate  of  his 
voyage  from  England,  or  one  of  the  very  few 
persons  in  Melbourne  who  had  seen  him  with 
his  former  wife,  might  encounter  him  and  in- 
[102] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

quire  as  to  his  changed  name  and  partner: — 
but  the  extrication  of  himself  from  such  an  en- 
tanglement would  have  been  merely  a  stimu- 
lating mental  exercise  to  Deeming,  whose 
record,  as  searched  after  his  latest  crime  was 
known  and  the  hue-and-cry  was  on  his  trail, 
shows  him  to  have  been  a  most  accomplished 
swindler,  and  a  man  of  singular  address  in  all 
forms  of  deceit. 

In  these  comparatively  populous  sections,  too, 
the  free  and  wide  circulation  of  newspapers 
would  have  brought  immediate  warning,  by  an- 
nouncement of  the  discovery  of  the  Windsor 
murder,  of  the  danger  he  was  in,  and  thus  have 
aided  his  escape;  for  it  was  not  until  several 
days  after  the  body  was  found  that  its  identity 
was  revealed,  and  many  more  before  any  clue 
was  found  to  Deeming's  whereabouts.  With 
railways  extending  to  ports  in  New  South 
Wales,  Victoria,  South  Australia  and  Queens- 
land, his  opportunities  for  quitting  the  country 
quickly  and  secretly  were  numerous;  and  once 
away  before  the  search  for  him  had  even  been 
started,  the  chance  of  capturing  him  would  have 
been  poor  indeed. 

In  Western  Australia,  whither  Miss  Rouns- 
fell  had  been  innocently  instrumental  in  sending 
him,  the  situation  was  entirely  different.  No 
[103] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

railways  connect  the  colony  with  the  others,  and 
ingress  and  egress  are  alike  possible  only  by 
sea.  Moreover,  being  the  latest  of  the  Colonies 
in  which  the  old  English  system  of  penal-trans- 
portation was  abolished,  and  still  harboring 
many  of  the  former  subjects  of  that  regime, 
Western  Australia  at  this  time  maintained 
through  its  police  a  close  system  of  espionage 
over  all  who  arrived  or  departed  by  the  few 
seaports  of  the  district.  Thus  did  the  mur- 
derer walk  into  a  cul-de-sac;  and  when  the  pur- 
suit (by  an  extraordinarily  sagacious  piece  of 
deductive  work  on  the  part  of  the  Melbourne 
detectives,  which  it  would  interfere  with  the 
purpose  of  this  narrative  to  describe)  reached 
Albany,  the  officers,  armed  with  warrants  for 
his  arrest  and  learning  from  the  local  police 
records  that  a  man  such  as  they  described  had 
"gone  up  country"  and  had  not  returned,  had 
only  to  endure  the  tedious  desert  journey  to 
Frazer's  gold-mines  at  Southern  Cross,  and 
apprehend  him  in  the  very  house  he  had  pre- 
pared for  his  awaited  bride. 


[104] 


CHAPTER    IV 
THE  EXPIATION 

RUN  to  earth,  and  captured  like  a  rabbit  at 
the  end  of  its  burrow,  the  murderer  was 
brought  to  Albany,  and  shipped  to  Melbourne 
by  the  liner  "Ballaarat."  As  a  relief  from  the 
general  lack  of  events  of  interest  that  marked 
his  return  progress,  it  may  be  noted  that  the 
train  on  which  he  traveled  from  Freemantle  to 
Albany,  was  stormed  at  York  by  an  indignant 
populace,  who  voiced  the  sentiment  universally 
pervading  all  the  Colonies  against  his  atrocities 
by  a  determined  effort  to  visit  a  rude,  if  origi- 
nal, form  of  justice  upon  him  by  tearing  him  to 
pieces  between  two  bullock-teams,  and  were  dis- 
suaded with  difficulty  from  this  intention  by  a 
display  of  revolvers  by  his  guards.  His  feel- 
ings were  outraged  also  on  the  steamer,  where 
he  expressed  himself  as  much  distressed  by  the 
light  and  profane  conversation  of  certain  unre- 
generate  marines  who  were  on  their  way  to  the 
Australian  station,  and  strongly  rebuked  them 
therefor: — thus  illustrating  anew  the  strange 
contradiction  in  his  nature  which  was  before 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

shown  in  his  reproach  of  Miss  Rounsfell's  fond- 
ness for  dancing.  In  fact,  all  who  at  various 
times  came  in  contact  with  him — including  and 
ending  with  his  guardians  in  the  Melbourne 
jail — remarked  upon  his  scrupulousness  of  lan- 
guage and  nicety  of  conduct. 

I  have  gone  thus  at  some  length  into  a  de- 
scription of  this  monster  and  his  crimes  for  two 
reasons: — in  the  first  place  because  it  seemed 
essential  to  show  the  causes  of  the  repulsion 
and  horror  which  his  very  name  inspired,  and 
thus  to  place  the  reader  in  a  position  to  ap- 
preciate the  effect  upon  the  popular  mind  of 
later  incidents  which  I  am  about  to  record; 
and,  in  the  second  place,  because  the  close  study 
which  I  was  able  to  give  alike  to  the  man  and 
his  deeds  convinced  me  that  his  case  was  one 
possessing  far  more  interest  for  the  psychologist 
than  even  the  criminologist. 

The  ingenious  Sir  William  S.  Gilbert,  in  the 
song  of  the  sentimental  police  sergeant  in  "The 
Pirates  of  Penzance,"  wherein  it  is  recited  that 

"When  the  enterprizing  burglar  isn't  burgling, 
When  the  cutthroat  isn't  occupied  with  crime, 
He  loves  to  hear  the  little  brook  a-gurgling, 
And  listens  to  the  merry  village  chime" — 

[106] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

voiced  a  truth  which  has  been  marked  in  the 
cases  of  many  malefactors.  It  has  been  ob- 
served of  Deeming  that,  in  the  intervals  of 
swindling,  lying  and  homicide  by  which  his 
career  is  chiefly  remembered,  he  bristled  like  a 
copybook  with  virtuous  and  noble  sentiments — 
nor  is  his  sincerity  to  be  doubted  in  their  ut- 
terance. It  is  unquestionable  that  he  was  a  man 
of  singular  address  and  subtlety — not  only 
among  men  skilled  in  business  affairs  and  ex- 
perienced in  reading  character.  He  was  a 
clever  mechanic,  and  able  to  adapt  himself 
quickly  and  efficiently  to  any  occupation : — as  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  although  there  is  nothing 
in  his  history  to  indicate  that  he  had  had  any 
previous  experience  in  mine-management,  he 
more  than  fulfilled  all  the  requirements  laid 
upon  him  at  Southern  Cross,  increased  the  out- 
put of  gold  by  ingenious  inventions,  and  was 
esteemed  by  the  company  as  the  most  capable 
manager  it  had  ever  had.  He  had  a  marked, 
if  imperfectly  developed,  fondness  for  music 
and  literature,  and  although  his  conversation 
included  many  grammatical  solecisms,  it  was 
effective  and  often  eloquent.  His  taste  in  dress, 
although  rather  flamboyant  in  the  matter  of 
jewelry,  of  which  he  always  wore  a  profusion, 
was  noticeably  correct — the  frock-coat,  light 
[107] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

trousers  and  perfectly-fitting  patent-leather 
shoes  which  he  wore  at  his  trial  were  evidently 
from  the  hands  of  the  best  London  outfitters, 
and  would  have  graced  (as  they  doubtless  had 
done)  the  fashionable  afternoon  parade  which 
is  a  feature  of  Melbourne's  Collins  Street. 

The  anomaly  that  is  suggested  by  these 
established  facts  regarding  him  is  of  minor  in- 
terest, however,  in  comparison  with  more 
striking  contradictions  that  were  remarked 
after  his  capture.  It  was  my  fortune  to  have 
a  place  near  him  at  the  inquest  which  resulted 
in  his  commitment  for  trial,  as  well  as  at  the 
trial  itself  that  duly  followed.  Popular  feeling 
against  him  was  so  intense  and  violent  that  the 
authorities  did  not  dare  to  land  him  at  the 
steamboat  pier,  but  smuggled  him  aboard  a  tug 
when  the  "Ballaarat"  entered  the  harbor,  and 
brought  him  ashore  at  the  suburb  of  St.  Kilda, 
whence  he  was  hurried  in  a  closed  cab  to  the 
Melbourne  jail.  Brought  into  the  court  where 
the  inquest  was  held,  his  appearance  was  so 
brutal  and  revolting  that  a  murmur  of  horror 
and  disgust  arose  at  his  entrance  which  the 
judge  and  officers  with  difficulty  quelled. 

There  was  in  his  deeply-lined  and  saturnine 
face  no  indication  of  an  understanding  of  his 
position.  His  lips  were  drawn  in  a  sardonic 
[108] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

sneer,  and  his  eyes — steely,  evil  and  magnetic — 
glistened  like  those  of  the  basilisk  as  he  looked 
boldly  and  with  a  sort  of  savage  bravado  at 
the  faces  about  him.  He  disdained  to  pay  any 
attention  to  the  proceedings,  and  was  seemingly  ; 
deaf  to  the  testimony  that  was  advanced  against 
him  by  more  than  thirty  witnesses.  Yet  he 
evinced  a  lively,  if  contemptuous,  interest  in 
minor  details,  and  audibly  expressed  his  views 
regarding  them.  When  the  canary  that  had 
played  so  singular  a  part  in  his  Australian  ex- 
periences was  produced,  still  in  its  ornate  gilded 
cage,  he  cried  out:  "Hullo!  here  comes  the 
menagerie!  Why  don't  the  band  play?"  Of 
a  reporter  taking  notes  at  a  table  near  him  he 
remarked  that  "he  wrote  like  a  hen,"  com- 
mented upon  the  weak  utterance  of  a  certain 
witness  that  "he  had  no  more  voice  than  a  con- 
sumptive shrimp,"  and  interjected  ribald  criti- 
cisms on  the  words  of  the  judge  that  were  fairly 
shocking  under  the  circumstances. 

When,  at  the  termination  of  the  proceedings, 
the  judge  ordered  his  commitment  for  trial, 
and  stated  that  a  rescript  would  be  issued 
against  him  for  the  wilful  murder  of  his  wife, 
Emily  Williams,  he  shouted,  in  a  shrill,  cack- 
ling, strident  sort  of  voice:  "And  when  you 
have  got  it,  you  can  put  it  in  your  pipe  and 
[109] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

smoke  it!" — looking  about  with  a  demoniac 
grin  as  if  expecting  applause  for  an  effective  bit 
of  repartee.  As  the  constables  seized  him  and 
dragged  him  to  the  door,  his  eyes  fell  upon  a 
comely  young  woman  standing  on  the  edge  of 
the  crowd,  who  regarded  him  with  horrified 
amazement.  Breaking  away  from  the  officers, 
he  danced  up  to  her,  chucked  her  under  the 
chin,  and  with  his  leering  face  close  to  hers 
ejaculated:  "O,  you  ducky,  ducky!"  and 
disappeared  amid  the  cries  of  the  scandalized 
lookers-on. 

I  do  not  know  what  the  emotions  of  other 
attendants  on  the  trial  may  have  been,  but  I 
remember  my  own  mental  attitude  as  one  of 
distaste  that  my  duties  as  a  correspondent  re- 
quired my  presence.  To  see  one  weak  human 
being  contending  for  his  life  against  the  or- 
ganized and  tremendous  forces  of  the  Law  is 
always  a  pitiful  and  moving  spectacle;  in  this 
case,  with  recollections  of  the  repulsive  inci- 
dents of  the  inquest  in  mind,  one  nerved  one- 
self for  some  scene  of  desperation  and  horror. 
The  dock,  surrounded  by  a  spiked  railing  and 
already  guarded  by  a  posse  of  white-helmeted 
constables,  stood  in  the  centre  of  the  court- 
room, its  platform,  elevated  some  three  feet 
[no] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW         «• 

from  the  floor,  being  furnished  with  a  trap- 
door that  communicated  with  the  cells  below  by 
a  spiral  iron  staircase,  which  the  prisoner  must 
ascend.  The  audience  watched  this  trap-door 
in  somewhat  that  state  of  hesitating  eagerness 
with  which  a  child  awaits  the  spring  of  a  jack- 
in-the-box,  not  knowing  what  grotesque  or  ter- 
rifying thing  may  appear: — and  when  it  lifted, 
and  the  murderer  stepped  to  his  place  beneath 
the  thousand-eyed  gaze  that  was  fastened  upon 
him,  a  murmur  in  which  amazement  was  the 
dominant  note  ran  through  the  room. 

My  own  first  feeling  was  that  my  eyesight 
was  playing  me  a  trick;  my  second,  that  by  some 
change  of  program  of  which  I  had  not  been 
informed,  the  trial  of  Deeming  had  been  post- 
poned. In  this  frock-coated,  well-groomed  and 
gentlemanly  person  in  the  dock  there  was  no 
trace  whatever  of  the  ruffian  who  had  been  the 
central  figure  of  the  inquest.  In  age  he  seemed 
to  have  dropped  some  twenty  years;  his  man- 
ner was  perfect,  showing  no  trace  either  of 
apprehension  or  bravado: — in  short,  the  im- 
pression he  conveyed  (as  I  described  it  in  my 
correspondence  at  the  time)  was  of  a  young 
clergyman  of  advanced  views  presenting  him- 
self to  trial  for  heresy,  rather  than  of  one  of 
the  most  brutal  murderers  of  his  generation. 

[ml 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

This  impression  prevailed  during  the  four  days 
his  trial  lasted;  only  once  or  twice  could  one 
detect  in  his  eye  the  former  flash  of  implacable- 
ness  and  ferocity.  It  was  not  as  if  he  made 
an  effort  to  keep  himself  in  control,  but  rather 
as  if  he  were  a  man  with  two  strongly  opposed 
and  antagonistic  sides  to  his  nature,  of  which 
one  or  the  other  might  manifest  itself  without 
any  conscious  exercise  of  will. 

It  was  also  evident  to  anyone  who  could  ob- 
serve him  dispassionately  that  the  details  of 
the  murder,  as  they  were  brought  out  in  the 
testimony,  were  all  as  news  to  him : — and  when, 
in  the  address  he  made  to  the  jury  before  it 
retired  to  consider  its  verdict,  he  admitted 
knowledge  of  the  subsidiary  facts  brought  out 
(as  to  his  acquaintance  with  Miss  Rounsfell,  for 
example),  but  swore  he  was  as  innocent  as  he 
was  incapable  of  the  murder  of  his  wife,  I,  for 
one,  believed  him  sincere,  although  I  could  per- 
ceive in  the  faces  about  me  that  I  was  alone 
in  that  opinion.  A  suggestion  that  this  man 
might  illustrate  the  phenomenon  of  "dual  per- 
sonality" and  should  be  subjected  to  hypnotic 
suggestion  at  the  hands  of  qualified  experts, 
rather  than  have  swift  condemnation  measured 
out  to  him,  would  doubtless  have  been  received 
with  derision  by  the  hard-headed  audience  that 

[112] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

was  the  real  jury  Tn  the  case ;  but  I  felt  at  the 
time,  and  feel  now  even  more  strongly,  that  if 
Frederick  Bailey  Deeming  had  been  tried  in  a 
country  where  psychological  aberrations  have 
been  the  subject  of  study,  he  would  have  been 
committed,  not  to  the  hangman,  but  to  a  life- 
long restraint  wherein  science  might  have 
gained  from  his  extraordinary  personality 
much  valuable  knowledge. 

The  man  whose  life  was  choked  out  of  him 
on  the  gallows  three  weeks  later  was  the  man 
of  the  inquest,  not  the  man  of  the  trial — and 
in  this  fact  is  some  occasion  for  satisfaction. 
He  was  more  subdued,  as  though  he  appreci- 
ated— as  any  other  animal  might  do — what  the 
sinister  preparations  for  his  ending  meant: — 
but  when,  as  he  hung  beneath  the  open  trap,  the 
death-cap  was  lifted  from  his  face,  there  were 
plainly  to  be  seen  the  hard  and  brutal  lines 
about  his  mouth,  and  the  wolfish  sneer  upon 
his  lips,  which  one  could  not  but  feel,  with  some- 
thing like  a  shudder,  had  distinguished  his 
features  in  the  commission  of  the  atrocities  for 
which  at  last  he  had  paid  such  insufficient  price 
as  society  could  exact. 

The  scaffold  of  the  Melbourne  jail  is  a  per- 
manent structure  with  several  traps;  and  across 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

and  above  it  runs  a  heavy  beam,  its  ends  fixed 
in  the  solid  masonry  of  the  walls,  and  the 
greater  part  of  its  length  scarred  and  grooved 
by  the  chafing  of  the  ropes  which,  from  time 
to  time,  have  given  despatch  to  the  souls  of 
several  hundred  murderers.  As  I  looked  up 
at  this  fearsome  tally-stick,  I  turned  to  the 
oldest  warder  of  the  jail,  a  man  of  nearly 
seventy  years,  who  had  been  present  at  my 
interview  with  Deeming  a  few  days  before,  and 
who  now  stood  beside  me. 

"I  want  to  ask  you  a  question,"  I  said,  "un- 
less your  official  position  may  prevent  your 
answering  it." 

"What  is  it,  sir?"  he  inquired. 

"You  have  been  for  many  years  a  warder 
here,  and  must  have  seen  many  men  under  sen- 
tence of  death." 

"Yes,"  he  replied.  "I  was  first  here  in  the 
bushranging  days,  and  have  been  here  ever 
since.  I  fancy  I  have  seen  two  hundred  men 
depart  this  life  by  the  route  of  that  gal- 
lows." 

"Then,"  said  I,  "you  should  be  a  good  judge 
of  the  character  and  mental  state  of  a  man  who 
is  awaiting  a  death  of  that  sort.  Here  is  my 
question: — What  is  your  opinion  of  Deem- 
ing?" 

["4] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

"Mad,  sir,"  replied  the  warder.  "Mad  as  a 
March  hare." 

This  verdict  might  be  qualified,  but  I  believe 
it  to  be  essentially  just. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE    HOUSE    ON   THE    HILL 

IN  beginning  this  chapter  I  find  myself  fac- 
ing a  dilemma — one  not  so  puzzling  as  that 
which  gave  Hamlet  pause,  and  evoked  his 
famous  soliloquy,  and  yet  like  it,  too,  in  that 
it  forces  me  to  hesitate  before  the  mystery  of 
the  Unseen.  Thus  far  my  story  has  the  support 
of  incontrovertible  facts  and  permanent  and 
referable  legal  and  criminal  records;  I  must 
now  cut  loose  from  these,  and  trust  my  weight 
upon  the  assertion  that  the  last  half  of  my  nar- 
rative, which  I  now  launch  upon,  is  in  every 
detail  and  particular  as  true  as  the  first.  In 
the  stress  of  the  responsibility  thus  assumed  it 
might  seem  natural  to  marshall  about  me  such 
facts  and  persons  as  I  might  invoke  as  cor- 
roborative witnesses.  Of  these  there  are  not 
a  few: — but  although  there  is  (sometimes) 
"wisdom  in  a  multitude  of  counsellors,"  con- 
viction in  the  actuality  of  truth  in  narrations 
of  so-called  "supernatural"  phenomena  is  as 
likely  as  otherwise  to  be  befogged  in  exact  pro- 
portion to  the  size  of  their  "cloud  of  wit- 
[116] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

nesses."  Therefore  I  have,  after  reflection, 
decided  to  "take  the  stand"  myself  and  unsup- 
ported, and  to  throw  myself  upon  the  mercy 
of  the  court — my  readers — in  so  doing. 

Thus,  then,  I  shall  not  reveal  the  exact  loca- 
tion of  The  House  on  the  Hill,  nor  the  name 
of  the  owner,  from  whom,  for  a  year,  I  rented 
it.  It  is  doubtful  that  he  be  now  living,  for  he 
was  a  man  of  advanced  age  when  he  left  his 
house  in  my  hands,  and  departed  with  his  two 
unmarried  daughters  (themselves  of  mature 
years)  for  a  twelve-months'  tour  in  Europe. 
On  his  return  I  handed  him  the  keys  without 
any  reference  to  the  strange  occurrences  that 
had  come  to  me  from  my  bargaining  with  him: 
— nor  do  I  know  to  this  day  whether  he  had 
similar  experiences  after  my  departure,  or  even 
whether  they  may  have  enlivened  him  and  his 
family  prior  to  my  tenancy.  His  evident  anxiety 
to  lease  the  house  for  a  time  (I  took  it  fur- 
nished, and  at  a  rental  absurdly  low — in  fact, 
just  one-half  his  original  demand)  may  have 
had  no  special  significance,  although  I  often 
fancied  afterwards  that  I  had  found  a  reason 
for  it: — but  on  consideration  I  decided  not  to 
refer  to  certain  features  of  the  house  that  he 
had  failed  to  enumerate  as  among  its  attrac- 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

tions,  and  to  restore  him  without  remark  to 
their  renewal — if  he  knew  of  them — or  to  dis- 
cover them  for  himself — if  he  did  not. 

It  is  probable  that  few  of  my  readers  have 
spent  a  year  in  a  "haunted  house"-— I  use  this 
expression,  although  it  defines  nothing,  for  want 
of  a  better: — but  those  who  cherish  such  an 
experience  will  understand  why,  on  the  one 
hand,  I  did  not  wish  to  alarm  an  elderly  gentle- 
man and  his  amiable  daughters,  or  "give  a  bad 
name,"  as  the  saying  is,  to  his  property;  and 
why,  on  the  other,  I  did  not  care  to  run  the 
risk  of  living  in  his  recollection,  and  in  the 
minds  of  his  neighbors  to  whom  he  might  re- 
late my  story,  as  a  person  of  feeble  intellect, 
if  not  a  lunatic  outright.  But  I  would  give  a 
good  deal  to  know  what  he  knew  about  that 
house. 

A  circumstance  that  I  took  no  note  of  at  the 
time,  but  which  afterwards  seemed  to  have  a 
possible  significance,  occurred  at  the  house  one 
evening  when  I  had  called  to  complete  negotia- 
tions by  signing  the  lease  and  going  through 
other  formalities  precedent  to  taking  posses- 
sion. The  owner  had  told  me  that  one  of  his 
reasons  for  desiring  a  change  of  scene  for  a 
time  was  that  his  wife  had  died  three  months 
before  after  a  lingering  illness  that  had  com- 
[1.8] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

pletely  worn  out  his  daughters  as  well  as  him- 
self:— and  when  the  business  of  his  final  even- 
ing was  completed,  the  younger  woman  uttered 
this  strange  remark: — "Well,  it  will  be  a  relief 
not  to  see  mother  about  all  the  time!" — and 
was  immediately  checked  by  her  sister.  I  had 
before  noted  her  as  a  nervous-mannered,  some- 
what anaemic-looking  person,  and  her  observa- 
tion touched  my  mind  too  lightly  to  leave  any 
impression  upon  it. 

There  was  nothing  at  all  peculiar  in  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  house.  It  stood  upon  a  breezy 
hill-top  in  the  outskirts  of  one  of  Melbourne's 
most  attractive  suburbs;  the  train  from  town 
landed  me,  every  evening,  at  the  village  sta- 
tion, and  a  ten-minute  walk  up  a  rather  steep 
road  brought  me  comfortably  to  home  and 
dinner.  The  house  was  a  delightful  one  when 
you  got  to  it.  It  occupied  a  corner  lot,  and  had 
extensive  grounds  around  it;  there  was  a  large 
orchard  at  the  rear,  filled  with  grape-vines,  and 
pear,  lemon,  and  fig  trees — although  none  of 
them  did  much  in  the  matter  of  bearing.  There 
were  two  trees  in  the  front  yard  that  gave  pro- 
fusely of  pomegranates  (a  decorative  fruit,  but 
one  whose  edible  qualities  always  seemed  to  me 
greatly  overrated)  ;  there  were  spacious  flower 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

beds  on  both  sides  of  the  building,  and  the 
nearest  neighbors  were  at  least  two  hundred 
yards  away.  On  the  other  side  of  the  street 
which  ran  in  front  of  the  house  was  a  large, 
unimproved  lot  which  gave  a  touch  of  the  coun- 
try by  the  presence  in  it  of  several  ancient  gum 
trees,  in  which  the  "laughing  jackasses"  cackled 
and  vociferated  both  morning  and  evening: — 
and  when  my  wife  and  I,  and  the  gentleman  of 
Scottish  ancestry  and  of  advanced  middle-age, 
whom,  as  our  best  of  friends,  we  had  induced 
to  share  the  enterprise  with  us,  looked  about 
upon  these  things  on  the  first  afternoon  of  our 
occupancy,  we  pronounced  them  all  "very 
good." 

The  house  was  not  a  large  one,  comprising 
six  living-rooms  and  a  kitchen,  besides  a  bath 
and  a  commodious  storeroom  and  pantry.  It 
was  of  the  bungalow  pattern,  a  type  which  is 
a  favorite  one  in  Australia,  where  the  high 
average  temperature  of  the  year  makes  cool- 
ness and  airiness  prime  essentials  in  a  dwelling. 
It  had  no  cellar,  but  was  raised  above  the 
ground  upon  brickwork,  thus  forming  a  dry 
air-chamber  below,  and  above  its  single  story 
was  a  low,  unfinished  attic,  which  afforded  an- 
other air-space,  and  stretched  without  parti- 
tions from  front  to  back  of  the  house.  There 
[120] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

was  no  floor  to  this  attic,  and  on  the  only  occa- 
sion when  I  explored  it,  I  had  to  crawl  from 
beam  to  beam,  the  pointed  roof  being  so  low 
that  I  could  barely  stand  upright  even  under 
its  ridgepole.  The  only  means  of  access  to 
this  part  of  the  house  was  a  ladder,  which 
could  be  brought  into  the  bathroom,  and  from 
which  could  be  raised  a  light  trap-door  in  the 
ceiling.  A  veranda  ran  along  the  front  of  the 
house,  and  a  wide  hall  extended,  without  turn 
or  obstruction,  from  front  to  back.  On  one 
side  of  this  hall — beginning  from  the  veranda 
— were  the  parlor,  dining-room,  bedroom,  and 
pantry;  on  the  other,  my  wife's  bedroom,  the 
bathroom,  our  friend's  room,  a  "spare-room," 
and  the  kitchen : — while  a  few  yards  behind  the 
house  stood  a  one-story  structure,  fitted  up  as  a 
laundry.  The  "spare-room"  here  mentioned  I 
furnished  as  a  smoking-room;  and  further 
equipped  it  by  building  a  bench  across  the  space 
before  the  single  window,  whereat  I  employed 
myself  now  and  then  in  preparing  the  skins  of 
birds  of  which  I  was  making  a  collection,  and 
which  I  either  shot  myself  in  frequent  excur- 
sions into  the  country,  or  which  were  sent  to 
me  by  agents,  both  whites  and  "blackfellows," 
whom  I  employed  in  various  parts  of  the 
Colonies. 

[121] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

One,  and  perhaps  the  most  peculiar,  feature 
of  the  bungalow  remains  to  be  described.  This 
was  a  small  apartment,  about  five  feet  square, 
between  the  bathroom  and  our  friend's  room 
(but  without  any  means  of  direct  communica- 
tion with  either),  and  entered  only  by  a  nar- 
row door  which  swung  outward  into  the  hall. 
It  was  unlighted,  and  was  provided  with  air 
by  a  ventilator  at  the  end  of  a  shaft  which  was 
carried  through  the  ceiling  into  the  attic  and 
ended  in  the  roof.  Its  floor  was  of  thickly-laid 
concrete,  and  in  its  centre,  and  occupying  nearly 
the  whole  ground  space,  was  a  sunken  portion 
about  two  feet  deep,  and  equipped  with  wooden 
racks  upon  which  boxes  of  butter,  pans  of  milk, 
and  various  receptacles  containing  similar 
perishable  articles  of  food  were  accommodated. 
This  chamber  was  of  real  use  in  a  country  where 
— at  the  time  at  least — ice  was  scarce  and  ex- 
pensive, and  where  summer  temperatures  of 
a  hundred  and  ten  degrees  in  the  shade  might 
be  expected;  since,  being  placed  in  a  part  of 
the  house  which  was  wholly  removed  from  the 
direct  rays  of  the  sun,  the  air  in  it  was  always 
cool  and  dry.  I  am  particular  in  describing 
this  room  because  of  a  strange  incident  that 
later  occurred  in  it. 

The  house  was  well,  almost  luxuriously,  fur- 
[122] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

nished.  The  parlor  contained  a  fine  piano,  and 
several  pictures  of  merit  adorned  the  walls; 
heat  (seldom  necessary  in  that  mild  climate  ex- 
cept on  rainy  days  in  autumn  and  winter)  was 
furnished  to  this  and  other  rooms  by  open  fire- 
places, and  vases  and  other  bric-a-brac  stood 
upon  the  mantels;  the  bed  and  table  linen  was 
all  of  excellent  quality,  there  was  a  sufficiency 
of  crockery  and  glass  and  silverware  and 
culinary  utensils : — and  as  we  sat  down  to  our 
inauguratory  dinner,  and  contrasted  our  con- 
dition with  the  three  years'  previous  experience 
of  travel  and  steamer  and  hotel  life  in  all  parts 
of  Australia,  New  Zealand,  Tasmania  and  the 
Fiji  Islands,  we  congratulated  each  other  that 
we  had  found  a  "home"  indeed. 

We  set  about  forthwith  to  improve  our  tem- 
porary property.  On  one  side  of  the  house, 
and  separated  from  it  by  a  fence  that  inclosed 
the  lawn  and  flower  gardens,  was  a  grassy 
"paddock"  that  might  formerly  have  pastured 
a  horse  or  a  cow.  As  we  had  no  use  for  either 
of  these  animals,  we  turned  this  space  into  a 
poultry  yard,  and  populated  it  with  chickens, 
ducks  and  geese — which  thrived  amazingly,  and 
in  due  time  furnished  us  all  the  eggs  and 
poultry  required  for  our  table.  Our  friend  (by 
nature  and  early  training  an  ardent  horticul- 
[123] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

turist,  but  whose  energies  in  that  science  had  for 
many  years  enjoyed  no  opportunity  for  exer- 
cise in  the  soil  of  the  Melbourne  Stock  Ex- 
change, of  which  he  was  a  member)  joyously 
took  the  flower  gardens  under  his  control,  and 
achieved  miracles  therein.  It  was  delightful, 
as  I  sat  in  the  shady  veranda  on  the  hot  Satur- 
day afternoons,  with  a  steamer  chair  to  loll  in, 
and  a  pipe  and  cooling  drink  at  hand,  to  con- 
template his  enthusiasm  as  he  delved  and 
sweated  to  prepare  new  ground  for  the  gor- 
geous blooms  which  he  coaxed  from  the  willing 
soil — at  the  same  time  extolling  my  own  sagacity 
in  asking  him  to  share  the  place  with  us;  to 
which  he  would  respond  in  appropriate  lan- 
guage. Our  household  was  so  small  that  we 
were  not  exposed  to  the  annoyances  of  the 
"servant-girl"  problem: — our  friend  and  I 
lunched  in  town,  and  a  capable  woman  who 
lived  nearby  assisted  my  wife  in  cooking  and 
serving  our  dinners,  and  attended  to  the  duties 
of  house-cleaning — returning  to  her  own  home 
when  her  work  was  accomplished,  and  leaving 
us  to  ourselves  in  the  evenings.  We  were  near 
enough  to  town  to  run  in  for  theatres  and  con- 
certs whenever  we  were  so  minded,  and  on  Sun- 
days did  some  modest  entertaining: — in  short, 
we  settled  into  a  phase  of  existence  as  nearly 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

Arcadian  as  is  often  possible  under  modern 
conditions  of  civilization,  and  although  it 
seemed  likely  to  be  commonplace  and  unevent- 
ful, we  were  in  mood  to  find  it  all  the  more 
desirable  and  pleasant  on  that  account.  That 
the  most  startling  experiences  of  our  lives  were 
soon  to  come  upon  us  never  entered  our  heads, 
and  for  some  six  weeks  we  lived  in  serenity  and 
happiness  amid  surroundings  that  day  by  day 
grew  more  attractive. 


CHAPTER   VI 

ON  THE   WINGS   OF   THE    STORM 

MY  interview  with  the  murderer,  as  de- 
scribed in  the  first  chapter,  took  place  upon  a 
Thursday.  The  next  day  was  one  of  the  gen- 
eral holidays  that  are  so  profusely  celebrated 
in  Australia : — I  do  not  remember  the  occasion, 
but  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  some  important 
horse  race  was  to  be  run  at  Flemington — the 
Epsom  of  the  Antipodes.  At  all  events,  I  took 
advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  go  into  the 
country  with  my  gun  on  a  collecting  trip, 
and  returned  at  night  with  a  fine  as- 
sortment of  cockatoos,  parrots  and  other 
brilliantly  plumaged  or  curious  birds  which 
make  the  Colonies  a  paradise  for  the  orni- 
thologist. 

The  day  following — Saturday — opened  with 
a  heavy  rain,  and  a  strong  wind  off  the  sea.  I 
had  no  particular  business  to  call  me  to  town, 
and,  anyhow,  all  activities  and  occupations 
would  cease  at  noon  in  deference  to  the  usual 
weekly  half-holiday.  Moreover,  I  had  several 
[126] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

hours'  work  before  me  in  removing  and  pre- 
serving the  skins  of  the  birds  I  had  shot;  so 
I  suppressed  the  faint  voice  of  duty  that  sug- 
gested that  I  might  find  something  of  im- 
portance awaiting  me  in  Melbourne,  and  after 
breakfast  sat  down  to  the  congenial  labor  of 
my  taxidermist's  bench.  Our  friend  departed 
for  the  Stock  Exchange,  and  my  wife  and  I 
were  left  alone  in  the  house. 

I  had  no  more  than  made  the  preliminary 
incision  in  the  breast  of  a  purple  lorrikeet  when 
the  doorbell  rang.  Answering  the  summons  I 
found  in  the  veranda'  a  black-haired,  sallow- 
faced  individual,  his  garments  sodden  with  rain, 
who  offered  for  my  purchase  and  perusal  "The 
History  and  Last  Confession  of  Frederick 
Bailey  Deeming,"  for  "the  small  price  of  six- 
pence." More  in  commiseration  for  the 
wretched  and  bedraggled  appearance  of  the 
vendor  than  from  any  other  motive  (for  I  was 
already  acquainted  with  the  "History,"  and 
gave  no  credence  to  any  announcement  that  a 
"Confession"  had  been  made)  I  bought  the 
pamphlet  and  returned  to  my  room.  Finding, 
as  I  had  suspected,  that  this  piece  of  literature 
contained  no  new  facts  whatever,  and  was 
totally  lacking  in  anything  even  the  most  re- 
motely suggesting  confession,  I  threw  it  into  the 
[127] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

fire  that  blazed  on  the  hearth  and  took  up  my 
interrupted  work.* 

The  incident  of  the  water-soaked  vendor  and 
his  pamphlet  had  had  the  effect,  however,  of 
turning  my  reflections  into  a  very  unpleasant 
channel.  In  spite  of  all  efforts  to  apply  myself 
to  the  task  in  hand,  the  thought  of  the  despair- 
ing man  in  the  condemned  cell,  my  visit  to  him 
two  days  before,  and  my  anticipated  presence 
at  his  execution  within  forty-eight  hours,  pressed 
upon  my  spirit  with  a  weight  which  I  found  it 
impossible  to  lift.  An  incident  which  had  oc- 
curred on  the  previous  day  had  also  added  a 
certain  element  of  pathos  to  the  situation. 

*I  had  good  personal  reasons  for  discrediting  any 
rumor  that  Deeming  had  made  confession,  for  the  reason 
that,  with  the  sanction  of  the  authorities  in  his  case, 
and  assisted  by  his  own  counsel,  I  had  made  every  effort 
to  secure  it  myself — and  had  failed.  When  the  matter 
was  suggested  to  Deeming,  and  he  was  assured  that  the 
money  that  was  offered  to  him  for  his  memoirs  would 
be  paid  to  Miss  Rounsfell  as  some  slight  recognition  of 
the  wrong  he  had  done  her,  he  eagerly  assented;  and 
being  supplied  with  pens  (quill — for  not  the  least  article 
in  steel  was  allowed  him)  he  went  to  work,  and  in  a 
few  days  had  turned  out  a  large  amount  of  manu- 
script. Examination  of  it,  however,  was  disappointing. 
It  began  encouragingly,  and  there  were  lucid  passages 
in  it;  but  as  a  whole  it  was  utterly  incoherent — and  to 
those  who  had  dispassionately  studied  the  man,  an  un 
doubted  proof  of  his  insanity. 

[128] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

During  my  absence  a  letter  had  come  to  my 
wife  through  the  morning  mail,  which,  to  her 
astonishment  and  disquiet,  proved  to  have  been 
written  by  the  murderer.  It  ran  as  follows : 

"H.  M.  Gaol 
"Melbourne 

"18-5-92 
"DEAR  MADAM: 

"I  beg  to  tender  you  my  sincere  thanks 
for  your  extreme  kindness  on  my  behalf, 
in  trying  to  get  Miss  Rounsefell  to  come 
and  see  me.  I  assure  you  that  if  she  had 
come  I  could  have  died  happy,  as  it  is  I 
shall  die  most  unhappy.  I  am  very  sorry 
indeed  that  you  did  not  find  her  as  kind 
and  as  Christian  like  as  yourself.  Again 
thanking  you, 

"I  beg  to  remain 

"Most  respectfully  yours 

"B.  SWANSTON. 

"you  may  show  Miss  Rounsefell  this  if 
you  wish.     B.  S." 

This  remarkable  document,  from  a  man  at 
the  moment  standing  on  the  brink  of  eternity, 
greatly    disturbed    (as    I    have    said)    its    re- 
[129] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

cipient;  but  she  did  not  hesitate.  As  the  letter 
intimates,  she  had  already,  in  pursuance  of  a 
promise  she  was  almost  compelled  to  make 
through  the  earnest  plea  of  the  murderer  when 
she  saw  him  in  the  condemned  cell,  seen  Miss 
Rounsfell  (this  is  the  correct  spelling  of  the 
name,  not  that  used  by  the  writer  of  the  above 
letter)  with  the  lack  of  success  that  the  letter 
suggests.  Now,  however,  she  determined  to 
see  the  girl  again : — and  showing  her  the  letter, 
she  urged  her  to  see  the  man — or  at  the  least 
write  to  him — and  grant  her  pardon  to  a  dying 
creature  who  seemed  to  have  no  hope  of  pardon 
elsewhere,  either  here  or  hereafter.  The  inter- 
view was  a  touching  one : — Miss  Rounsfell  was 
deeply  affected,  and  (greatly  to  her  credit,  I 
think)  consented  to  undertake  in  person  the 
charitable  mission  that  she  had  been  asked  to 
perform.  But  her  brother  so  strenuously  op- 
posed the  idea — even  to  the  minor  extent  of 
writing — that  she  was  compelled  to  abandon 
it;  and  Deeming  went  to  his  death  without  the 
consolation  that  he  had  so  simply  and  eloquently 
craved. 

Thus  in  many  ways  I  had  been  brought  into 
this  tragical  affair  much  more  intimately  than 
I  liked,  and  I  could  not  keep  my  mind  away 
from  it.  The  day  itself  added  to  the  gloom 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

that  fell  upon  me.  The  storm  had  steadily 
increased  in  violence  since  early  morning;  rain 
fell  in  torrents,  and  the  wind  roared  and 
whined  alternately  about  the  house;  the  heavy 
clouds  that  passed  close  overhead  cast  upon  the 
earth  a  series  of  shifting  shadows  as  their  sub- 
stance thickened  or  thinned  under  the  rending 
force  of  the  gale — if  the  Powers  of  Darkness 
ever  walk  abroad  by  day,  they  could  hardly 
find  an  occasion  more  eerie  and  fitting  than 
this.  Yet  no  such  suggestion  occurred  to  me : 
— I  could  hear  the  rattle  of  dishes  in  the  kitchen 
and  the  voice  of  my  wife  in  song  as  she  attended 
to  her  household  duties;  I  lighted  my  pipe  as 
another  means  of  affording  the  companion- 
ship that  T  somehow  craved,  and  for  an  hour 
or  so  applUd  myself  assiduously  to  the  task  in 
hand. 

I  was  seated  facing  the  window,  my  back 
to  the  open  door  that  led  into  the  hall.  Sud- 
denly, and  without  the  slightest  warning,  I 
heard  behind  me  a  long  and  dismal  groan. 
"A-a-ah!" — thus  it  came;  a  woman's  voice, 
apparently,  and  with  an  indescribable  but  cer- 
tain accent  in  it  of  mental  or  physical  pain. 
It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  this  awful  and 
ghastly  sound  froze  me  where  I  sat;  I  could 
feel  my  hair  move  upon  my  scalp,  and  a  chill, 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

as  though  I  had  been  dashed  with  ice-water, 
ran  up  and  down  my  spine.  For  a  moment  an 
inexpressible  horror  possessed  me — then  I  felt 
my  blood,  which  seemed  on  the  instant  to  have 
stopped  in  its  course,  flow  again  in  my  veins, 
and  with  a  mighty  effort  I  arose  and  faced  the 
open  door.  There  was  nothing  there — nor  in 
the  dim  hall,  into  which  I  shortly  ventured: — 
I  removed  my  slippers  and  silently  explored 
every  room;  still  nothing  to  be  seen,  and  the 
only  sound  the  splash  of  rain,  and  of -the  wind 
that  sobbed  and  muttered  around  the  house.  I 
crept  to  the  kitchen  and  peeped  in  cautiously: 
— my  wife  was  quietly  engaged  in  her  work, 
and  I  was  glad  to  think  that  she  had  heard 
nothing.  Indeed,  her  undisturbed  demeanor  en- 
couraged the  opinion  I  had  begun  to  form, 
that  some  peculiar  effect  of  the  wind  in  the 
open  fireplace  or  the  chimney  of  my  room  was 
responsible  for  the  sound  I  had  heard. 

Yet  I  was  by  no  means  satisfied  with  this 
explanation: — the  cry  was  too  human,  the  dis- 
tress it  evidenced  too  poignant,  to  be  thus 
counterfeited,  and  as  I  returned  to  my  bench, 
it  was  with  full  expectation  that  I  should  hear 
it  again.  I  was  not  disappointed.  In  a  few 
moments  it  came,  more  distinct  and  lugubrious 
than  before,  and  seemingly  within  the  very  room 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

itself;  and  as  I  whirled  about  to  confront  I 
knew  not  what,  the  groan  was  repeated,  coming 
from  the  empty  air  before  me  and  dying  away 
in  an  unutterably  sad  and  plaintive  sigh. 

I  made  another  swift  and  noiseless  survey  of 
the  house,  but  it  was  as  resultless  as  before, 
and  regained  my  room  much  shaken,  I  will  con- 
fess, but  still  unwilling  to  admit  that  the  sounds 
could  not  be  referred  to  natural  causes.  But  I 
found  no  solution  that  convinced  me.  I  might 
have  attributed  their  first  occurrence  to  hal- 
lucination, but  the  second  hearing  weakened 
that  hypothesis — the  groan  and  the  following 
sigh  were  inimitably  those  of  an  old  woman, 
who  was  either  at  the  point  of  death  or  over- 
whelmed with  distress  of  mind  and  body.  This 
resemblance  was  absolute,  and  I  sat  for  some 
time  revolving  the  strange  thing  in  my  mind. 
I  thought  of  relating  my  experience  to  my  wife, 
but  feared  to  alarm  her,  and  finally  went  back 
to  my  birds. 

Almost  immediately  there  came  for  the  third 
time  that  ghastly  wail  and  sigh — so  close  to 
my  ear  that,  had  any  living  person  uttered 
them,  his  face  must  almost  have  touched  my 
own.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  the  effect 
upon  me  was  so  unmanning  and  terrible  that  I 
uttered  a  cry  of  horror  and  fell  backward  with 
[133] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

the  chair  I  sat  in,  and  lay  sprawling  on  the  floor. 
At  the  same  instant  I  heard  my  wife  scream 
from  the  kitchen;  and  as  I  gathered  myself 
up  and  ran  to  her,  I  saw  her  standing  with 
her  back  against  the  wall,  staring  with  horrified 
eyes,  and  with  a  look  of  repulsion  and  fear  upon 
her  face,  at  something  invisible  to  me,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  room.  I  rushed  to  her  and 
grasped  her  hands : — they  were  cold  as  ice,  and 
her  fixed  and  rigid  gaze  into  what  to  me  was 
emptiness,  frightened  me  beyond  measure. 

"In  heaven's  name,"  I  cried,  "what  is  it?" 

"It  is  Deeming's  mother,"  she  answered,  in 
a  whisper  I  could  hardly  hear. 

"Deeming's  mother!" — I  echoed  her  words: 
— "How  do  you  know  it  is  Deeming's  mother?" 

"I  saw  her  with  him  in  his  cell  at  the  jail," 
she  replied. 

"Then  what  he  said  was  true,  that  his  mother 
comes  back  to  trouble  him?" 

"Yes,  it  was  true;  and  now  she  comes  to 
me!  Go  away!"  she  cried,  addressing  some- 
thing /  could  not  see.  "I  cannot  help  you;  why 
do  you  torment  me!  Ah!" — with  a  sigh  of 
relief — "she  has  gone !"  and  she  sank  exhausted 
into  a  chair. 

We  had  a  long  and  memorable  talk  after 
that,  which  I  will  briefly  summarize.  My  wife 

[134] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

had  not  heard  the  groans  that  had  been  audible 
to  me  until  their  second  repetition;  then  the 
sound  that  had  seemed  beside  my  ear  came  at 
the  same  instant  close  to  hers,  and  her  cry  that 
joined  with  mine  had  been  wrung  from  her  by 
the  sight  of  the  apparition  which  on  the  instant 
presented  itself  to  her.  This  was  not  the  first 
time,  however,  that  it  had  appeared: — it  had 
closely  followed  upon  the  receipt  of  Deeming' s 
letter  the  day  before,  and  its  cries  of  distress 
and  appeals  for  help  had  been  so  agonizing  that 
it  was  as  much  on  that  account  as  because  of  the 
plea  of  the  murderer  himself  that  she  had  de- 
cided to  see  Miss  Rounsfell  again. 

The  apparition  did  not  reappear  that  day, 
and  there  was  no  recurrence  of  the  wailing 
lamentations — but  we  were  soon  to  have  further 
experience  of  them  for  all  that. 

The  storm  spent  itself  during  the  late  after- 
noon, and  was  succeeded  by  a  beautiful  even- 
ing. The  wind  was  still  high,  and  the  sky  filled 
with  broken  masses  of  clouds,  through  which 
the  full  moon  waded  heavily: — and  as  my  wife 
and  I  descended  the  hill,  soon  after  dinner,  to 
the  railway  station  on  our  way  to  keep  an  en- 
gagement to  call  upon  the  Consul-General  of 
the  United  States  at  his  residence  at  St.  Kilda, 
we  agreed  that  the  night  was  just  such  a  one 

[135] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

as  might  inspire  Dore  in  some  one  of  his  fan- 
tastic compositions.  After  the  day's  gruesome 
events  we  had  hesitated  about  leaving  our  friend 
alone  during  our  absence;  but  we  finally  united 
upon  the  opinion  which  my  wife  advanced,  that 
as  she  seemed  to  be  the  sole  object  of  the  ap- 
parition's visit,  he  was  not  likely  to  be  molested. 
So  we  left  him  (albeit  with  some  misgiving) 
comfortably  seated  before  the  dining-room  fire 
in  a  large  easy-chair,  and  with  his  pipe  and  a 
new  novel  for  company,  and  took  our  de- 
parture. 

It  was  after  midnight  when  we  returned. 
The  gale  had  blown  itself  out,  and  the  moon 
looked  down  upon  a  world  that  seemed  resting 
in  sleep  after  the  turmoil  of  the  day.  My  wife 
went  at  once  to  her  room  to  lay  aside  her  outer 
garments  and  I  repaired,  with  much  curiosity 
and  a  little  apprehension  stirring  me,  to  the 
dining-room. 

I  found  our  friend  as  we  had  left  him,  book 
in  hand  and  with  his  smoked-out  pipe  lying  on 
a  table  beside  him.  He  was  not  alone,  how- 
ever— our  two  dogs — a  wire-haired  Scotch 
terrier  and  a  fox-terrier — which  I  had  as  usual 
chained  up  for  the  night  in  their  kennels  at  the 
back  of  the  house,  were  dozing  together  on  the 
hearth-rug. 

[136] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

"Hullo!"  I  exclaimed;  "what  are  those  dogs 
doing  here  ?  You  know  they  are  never  allowed 
to  come  into  the  house." 

"Well,"  our  friend  replied.  "I  felt  lonely, 
and  so  I  brought  them  in  to  keep  me  company." 

"That's  an  odd  idea,"  I  rejoined.  "I  thought 
your  book  and  pipe  would  be  society  enough. 
Besides,  there  is  plenty  of  'Scotch'  and  soda  on 
the  sideboard." 

"I  tried  that,  too,"  he  confessed.  "But,  do 
you  know?  this  has  been  the  most  infernally 
unpleasant  evening  I  ever  spent  in  my  life.  The 
wind  has  been  making  the  most  uncanny  noises 
— I  would  swear  there  were  people  moving  all 
over  the  house  if  I  did  not  know  I  was  the  only 
person  in  it.  I  have  been  all  over  the  place 
a  dozen  times,  but  could  find  nothing.  At  last 
I  couldn't  stand  it;  so  I  unchained  and  brought 
in  the  dogs.  Somehow  they  didn't  seem  to  have 
much  use  for  the  place — I  had  to  drag  them  in 
by  their  collars." 

"They  knew  they  had  no  right  to  be  here," 
I  commented.  "The  matter  with  you  is,  you've 
been  smoking  too  much,  and  got  your  nerves 
on  edge.  Come  and  help  me  put  up  the  dogs 
before  my  wife  sees  them,  or  you'll  'get  what 
for,'  as  your  English  expression  is." 

This  office  performed,  we  returned  to  the 
[137] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

dining-room,  where  I  suggested  a  "Scotch-and- 
soda"  before  retiring  for  the  night,  and  to- 
gether at  the  sideboard  we  prepared  each  a 
modest  potion.  As  we  touched  glasses  to  a 
good  sleep  and  happy  awakening,  there  sounded 
from  the  air  behind  us  that  weird  and  terrible 
cry!  My  friend's  face  turned  ashen  on  the 
instant  and  his  glass  fell  from  his  hand  and 
lay  shattered  on  the  hardwood  floor. 

"My  God!"  he  cried;  "did  you  hear  that?" 

I  was  startled,  of  course,  but  the  morning's 
experience,  reinforced  by  anticipation  of  some 
such  happening,  had  steeled  my  nerves. 

"Did  I  hear  what?"  I  asked.  "Look  here, 
old  man,  you  are  certainly  in  a  queer  way  to- 
night. What  should  I  hear? — everything  is 
as  quiet  as  death." 

"Do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  he  demanded, 
looking  at  me  incredulously  and  with  alarm 
still  in  his  face,  "that  you  did  not  hear  that 
awful  groan?" — but  meanwhile  I  had  filled  an- 
other tumbler  for  him,  which  he  hastily 
emptied,  although  the  glass  rattled  against  his 
teeth  as  he  drank. 

"Come,  come!"  I  said;  "go  to  bed,  and  you 
will  be  all  right  in  the  morning;" — but  the 
words  had  but  left  my  lips  when,  right  between 
us  as  it  seemed,  there  swelled  again  upon  the 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

air  that  utterance  of  anguish,  followed  by  the 
dying  cadence  of  a  sigh. 

"There ! — there ! — there !"  stammered  my 
companion: — "did  you  hear  it  then?" 

"Yes,  I  did,"  I  replied;  "and  the  first  time 
as  well.  Is  that  what  has  disturbed  you  to- 
night?" 

"No,  not  exactly  that — nothing  so  awful; 
but  all  sorts  of  strange  noises;  I  can't  describe 
them.  I  say — what  kind  of  a  house  is  this?  I 
have  always  believed  the  stories  of  haunted 
houses  were  bally  nonsense;  but  in  heaven's 
name  what  does  all  this  mean?" 

I  was  unable  to  enlighten  him: — and  al- 
though I  called  my  wife  from  her  room  and 
described  to  him  our  morning's  experience  with 
the  voices,  I  thought  it  best  to  keep  the  feature 
of  the  apparition  a  secret.  In  fact,  he  never 
did  learn  of  it,  or  of  many  other  things  that 
did  not  come  directly  to  his  personal  appre- 
hension. What  he  did  see  and  hear,  in  the 
months  that  followed,  was  bad  enough,  God 
knows ! — and  I  am  convinced  that  one  of  the 
reasons  (and  that  not  the  least  considerable) 
which  prevented  him  from  leaving  us  on  any 
one  of  a  dozen  different  occasions,  and  our- 
selves from  abandoning  the  house  outright,  was 
the  consideration  (on  his  part)  that  it  would 
[139] 


TRUE    TALES     OF    THE     WEIRD 

be  unseemly  for  one  of  his  nation  to  confess 
himself  inferior  in  pluck  to  an  American,  and 
(on  ours)  that  we  should  be  untrue  to  all  our 
country's  traditions  if  we  permitted  a  Britisher 
to  see  us  in  retreat. 

This  reason  may  seem  extreme,  and  even 
fantastical;  but  it  has  its  weight  in  explaining 
why — at  the  outset,  at  least — we  held  our 
ground.  In  the  long  discussion  which  followed, 
that  night,  it  was  evident  that  each  party  was 
urgent  that  the  other  should  suggest  abandon- 
ment of  the  premises.  Neither,  however,  would 
broach  the  subject,  and  we  separated  for  bed 
at  last  with  the  implied  understanding  that  we 
were  to  remain. 


[140] 


CHAPTER   VII 

A    GHOSTLY   CO-TENANCY 

SUCH  was  the  first  manifestation  of  a  Pos- 
session which  held  the  house  for  more  than  nine 
months.  That  we  endured  it  is  to  me  now 
sufficient  cause  for  wonder,  and  the  reasons  why 
we  did  so  (reasons  which  presented  them- 
selves by  degrees)  may  require  some  explana- 
tion. It  must  be  said  that  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  visitations  which  I  shall  duly  describe, 
there  were  no  occasions  so  terrifying  as  those 
which  happened  on  the  day  of  the  storm. 
Moreover,  as  my  wife  and  I  had  made  ac- 
quaintance in  former  years  with  many  inex- 
plicable things  and  had  never  seen  any  serious 
results  come  from  them,  our  attitude  toward 
these  new  phenomena  was  one  compact  more 
of  curiosity  than  anything  else.  The  experi- 
ence could  hardly  be  called  agreeable,  but  it 
was  strange  and  unusual,  and  we  wanted  to  find 
out  what  it  all  meant.  We  never  did  find  out, 
by  the  way,  but  the  anticipation  (which  was  con- 
stant) that  we  should,  kept  us  interested. 

The  amiable  reader  may  be  disposed  to 
credit  us  with  unusual  courage,  but  we  never 


TRUE    TALES    OY    THE    WEIRD 

looked  at  the  matter  in  that  light.  Besides  the 
influence  of  national  pride  which  I  have  men- 
tioned as  supporting  both  our  friend  and  our- 
selves, there  was  also  the  consideration  that  we 
had  covenanted  for  the  hopse  for  a  year,  and 
had  paid  the  first  six-months'  rent  in  advance 
— and  Yankee  and  Scottish  thrift  alike  moved 
us  to  desire  our  money's  worth;  and  although 
we  might  hope  to  annul  our  bargain  if  we  could 
plead  that  the  dwelling  was  infested  with  rats, 
we  had  doubts  as  to  our  standing  in  court  in 
case  we  should  set  up  a  defense  that  it  was 
overrun  with  ghosts.  Moreover,  we  liked  our 
quarters  so  well  that  we  could  not  make  up  our 
minds  to  leave  them  merely  because  an  unseen 
co-tenantry  insisted  on  sharing  them  with  us; 
therefore  we  remained,  and  in  time  even  man- 
aged to  extract  some  entertainment  from  the 
quips  and  cranks  that  were  more  or  less  con- 
stantly going  on. 

A  saving  feature  of  the  situation  was  the 
fact  that  the  manifestations  were  not  continu- 
ous, and  rarely  occurred — until  near  the  end  of 
our  term — at  night.  This,  I  think,  must  be 
set  down  as  an  unusual  circumstance,  but  it  was 
one  that  brought  us  considerable  relief.  It  need 
not  be  pointed  out,  for  example,  how  much  less 
terrifying  it  is  to  hear  muffled  footsteps  and  the 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

rustle  of  women's  garments  up  and  down  the 
hall  by  daylight  than  in  darkness,  and  to  see, 
under  the  same  conditions,  chairs  and  light 
tables  shifted  about  in  apparent  accordance 
with  some  invisible  person's  notion  of  their 
proper  arrangement.  It  is  somewhat  disquiet- 
ing, to  be  sure,  when  walking  through  the  hall, 
to  hear  the  bell  above  one's  head  break  out  in 
rattling  clangor,  and,  looking  through  the  wide- 
open  front  door,  to  perceive  that  no  visible  visit- 
or was  at  the  other  end  of  the  wire: — and  in 
spite  of  many  former  experiences,  we  could  not 
restrain  ourselves  from  jumping  in  our  seats 
when,  at  dinner,  all  the  doors  in  the  house 
would  slam  in  rapid  succession  with  a  violence 
that  set  the  dishes  dancing  on  the  board.  And 
the  singular  thing  about  this  performance  was 
that  although  the  sound  was  unmistakably  that 
of  banging  doors,  the  doors  themselves  seemed 
to  have  no  part  in  it.  More  than  once  we  ar- 
ranged them  in  anticipation  of  this  manifesta- 
tion, leaving  some  closed,  some  wide  open,  and 
some  ajar  at  various  angles  which  we  carefully 
noted.  Presently  would  come  the  expected 
thunderous  reverberations — and  running  from 
the  dining-room  we  would  find  every  door  pre- 
cisely as  we  had  left  it. 

Occasionally,    what   seemed   like   a   rushing 

[143] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

wind  would  sweep  through  the  hall  between  the 
wire-screened  doors  at  either  end  of  the  house, 
although  a  glance  out  of  the  window  showed 
that  the  leaves  of  the  trees  in  the  yard  were 
pendent  and  lifeless  in  an  utter  calm: — and  this 
circumstance  reminds  me  of  a  curious  thing  that 
twas  several  times  repeated. 

We  rarely  used  the  parlor,  which,  as  I  have 
said,  was  on  the  right  of  the  hall  as  one  entered 
the  house,  with  windows  giving  upon  the 
veranda.  To  the  decorations  of  this  room  which 
hadbeen  left  by  our  landlord,  we  had  made  some 
considerable  additions — photographs  of  New 
Zealand  scenery,  curios  and  wall  hangings  from 
Fiji,  and  other  such  matters.  Now  and  then 
would  break  out  in  that  room  a  racket  as  though 
a  dozen  devils  were  dancing  the  tarantelle,  ac- 
companied by  a  sound  as  of  a  maelstrom  of 
wind  whirling  in  it.  We  never  had  courage  to 
enter  while  the  disturbance  was  in  progress — 
in  fact  we  had  no  time  to  do  so,  as  it  always 
ended  within  a  few  minutes ;  but  when  we  opened 
the  door  after  the  noise  had  subsided,  we  in- 
variably found  the  same  condition  of  affairs — 
every  article  in  the  room  that  belonged  to  us 
piled  in  a  heap  on  the  floor,  and  all  the  pos- 
sessions of  the  absent  family  standing  or  hang- 
ing undisturbed  in  their  usual  places.  We  were 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

disposed  to  regard  this  demonstration  as  a 
gentle  hint  that  our  continuation  in  the  house 
was  not  desired,  and  that  the  "spooks,"  as  we 
came  familiarly  to  call  them,  had  in  furtherance 
of  this  idea  gathered  together  such  of  our  be- 
longings as  they  could  reach  in  order  to  facili- 
tate our  packing  up  for  departure.  But  we 
paid  no  heed  to  the  implied  suggestion,  restored 
the  room  to  its  former  condition,  and  in  a  short 
time  this  particular  form  of  annoyance  was  dis- 
continued. 

These  were  minor  occurrences,  ana  I  am  not 
relating  them  with  any  reference  to  the  order 
in  which  they  came.  As  they  seem  to  belong 
to  the  general  run  of  phenomena  that  have  been 
frequently  noticed  in  accounts  of  "haunted 
houses" — so  called — I  will  not  dwell  upon 
them;  merely  observing  that  the  effort  to  pro- 
duce them  was  entirely  misplaced  if  its  purpose 
was  to  frighten  us,  and  in  any  case  unworthy 
of  any  intelligent  source.  I  more  than  once  an- 
nounced this  opinion  in  a  loud  tone  of  voice 
when  the  rustlings  and  footfalls,  and  their  often 
accompanying  groans  and  sighs  became  too  per- 
sistent, or  wearisome  in  their  lack  of  variety 
— and  it  was  curious  to  see  how  effective  this 
remonstrance  always  was.  A  dead  silence 
would  immediately  ensue,  and  for  hours,  and 

[145] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

sometimes  even  for  days,  the  house  would  be 
as  orderly  and  commonplace  as  possible. 

It  is  my  recollection  that  the  mother  of 
Deeming  (if,  indeed,  she  it  were)  made  no  fur- 
ther appearance  after  her  son's  execution.  She 
seems  to  have  expressed  herself  in  one  supreme 
and  futile  appeal  for  help,  and  then  to  have 
gone  to  her  place.  Several  others  followed 
her,  whom  I  could  hear  from  time  to  time  as 
they  moved  about,  and  whom  my  wife,  whose 
clearness  of  sight  in  these  matters  I  never 
shared,  described  as  an  old  woman,  another 
much  younger,  and  a  girl-child  some  four  or 
five  years  of  age.  They  never  attempted  any 
communication  with  us;  in  fact,  they  seemed 
quite  unaware  of  our  presence;  and  were  evi- 
dently not  concerned  In  any  of  the  bizarre  and 
seemingly  meaningless  manifestations  that  were 
continually  going  on.  We  fancied  that  the 
shade  of  the  elder  woman  was  that  of  the 
former  mistress  of  the  house,  whose  death,  as 
I  have  already  noted,  had  occurred  therein  some 
three  months  before  we  took  possession: — but 
as  she  ignored  us  entirely,  we  respected  her 
seeming  disinclination  to  a  mutual  Introduction, 
and  left  her  to  go  to  and  fro  in  the  way  she 
preferred.  This  way  was  not  altogether  a 
pleasant  one.  She  wore  a  black  gown,  my  wife 
[146] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

said,  with  a  neckerchief  of  some  white  material 
— the  rustle  of  her  gown,  which  I  could  plainly 
hear,  indicated  that  it  was  of  silk;  she  seemed 
unhappy  (we  thought  it  might  be  that  she  did 
not  understand  the  absence  of  her  husband  and 
daughters)  and  was  forever  sighing  softly  and 
wringing  her  hands.  The  younger  woman  (the 
two  never  seemed  to  be  conscious  of  each  others' 
existence — if  that  is  the  right  word)  was  in  a 
state  of  evident  discomfort  also,  although  she 
was  always  silent,  and  appeared  to  be  con- 
stantly in  search  of  something  she  could  not 
find. 

Altogether  we  found  these  shadowy  guests 
of  ours  a  rather  cheerless  company;  but  as  we 
had  had  no  voice  in  inviting  them,  and  feared 
that  their  departure  (if  they  should  accept  any 
intimation  from  us  that  it  was  desired)  might 
make  room  for  others  even  more  objectionable, 
we  were  fain  to  adapt  ourselves  to  the  situa- 
tion that  was  forced  upon  us.  The  child-ghost, 
however,  was  of  quite  different  disposition. 
She  had  something  with  her  that  seemed  to  take 
the  place  of  a  doll,  and  would  sit  with  it  by  the 
hour  in  a  corner  of  the  room  where  we  all 
were,  at  times  crooning  to  it  in  a  queer,  far- 
away, but  still  quite  audible  voice.  It  was  a 
"creepy"  thing  to  hear,  but  strangely  sweet  and 

EH?] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

musical,  for  all  that.  On  rarer  occasions  she 
would  sing  to  herself  a  song,  but  one  in  which 
no  words  could  be  distinguished;  in  all  her  ut- 
terances, indeed,  there  was  never  anything  that 
sounded  like  speech.  She  was  not  quite  sure  of 
Herself  in  this  song.  Now  and  then  she  would 
strike  a  wrong  note;  then  silence  for  a  moment, 
and  she  would  begin  the  song  again.  As  she 
reached  the  note  at  which  she  had  before 
stumbled,  she  would  pause,  then  take  the  note 
correctly,  give  a  pleased  little  laugh,  and  go 
on  successfully  to  the  end. 

This  extraordinary  performance  was  re- 
peated on  many  occasions.  One  bright  Sunday 
afternoon  I  was  sitting  in  talk  with  my  wife  in 
her  room,  when  this  weird  chant  started  up  in 
the  farthest  corner.  I  listened  through  the 
whole  of  the  usual  rendition — the  beginning, 
the  false  note,  the  return  for  a  new  trial,  the 
note  rightly  struck,  the  satisfied  laugh,  and  so 
on  to  the  conclusion.  Then  the  thing  began  all 
over  again. 

I  said,  rather  impatiently:  "Don't  sing  that 
again !  Can't  you  see  that  we  want  to  talk?" 

"Oh,    you    shouldn't   have    said   that!"    re- 
monstrated my  wife.     "She  has  gone  away" — 
and  in  fact  the  song  had  stopped,  and  it  was 
many  days  before  we  heard  it  again. 
[148] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

I  have  not  particularly  mentioned  our  friend 
in  this  recital  of  minor  happenings,  although 
he  had  his  share  in  most  of  them,  and  carried 
himself  throughout  in  a  plucky  and  admirable 
manner.  We  were  very  fond  of  him,  as  he  evi- 
dently was  of  us  to  endure  adventures  with  us 
which  he  must  have  found  uncongenial,  to  say 
the  least — he  being  a  man  of  quiet  tastes,  and 
one  not  prone  to  go  out  of  his  way  in  search 
for  excitement.  An  incident  that  happened  one 
night,  however,  came  very  near  to  ending  his 
residence  with  us. 

At  about  eight  o'clock  of  an  evening  in  June 
(the  time  of  year  when  the  days  are  at  their 
shortest  in  that  latitude),  he  and  I  were  smok- 
ing and  chatting  in  my  "den,"  my  wife  being 
in  her  own  room  at  the  front  of  the  house.  All 
at  once  the  two  dogs  who  were  chained  in  the 
back  yard  broke  out  in  a  terrific  chorus  of  bark- 
ing. They  were  ordinarily  very  quiet  animals, 
and  whenever  they  gave  tongue  (which  was 
only  when  some  tradesman  or  other  person 
came  upon  the  premises  by  the  back  gate)  it 
was  merely  by  a  yelp  or  two  to  inform  us  that 
they  were  attending  to  their  duty  as  guardians. 
On  this  occasion,  however,  one  might  have 
thought  there  were  a  dozen  dogs  behind  the 
house  instead  of  two: — they  seemed  fairly 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

frantic,  and  there  was  a  strange  note  in  their 
voices  such  as  I  had  never  heard  before. 

"What  on  earth  is  the  matter  with  those 
dogs?"  I  exclaimed.  "One  might  think  they 
were  being  murdered." 

"They  are  certainly  tremendously  excited 
about  something,"  my  companion  rejoined: — 
"let's  go  out  and  see  what  the  trouble  is" — and 
he  was  out  of  the  room,  and  unlocking  the  back 
door,  before  I  could  leave  my  easy-chair  to 
accompany  him.  As  I  reached  the  hall  I  was 
just  in  time  to  see  the  large  pane  of  ground- 
glass  with  which  the  upper  half  of  the  outside 
door  was  fitted,  fly  inward — shattered  into  a 
thousand  pieces  by  a  jagged  fragment  of  rock 
as  large  as  my  fist,  which  whizzed  by  my 
friend's  head  with  such  force  that  it  went  by 
me  also,  and  brought  up  against  the  front  door 
at  the  other  end  of  the  hall.  My  companion, 
who  had  escaped  death  or  a  serious  injury  by 
the  smallest  possible  margin,  fell  back  against 
the  wall  with  his  hands  over  his  face,  which  had 
been  cut  in  several  places  by  the  flying  glass ; 
but  he  quickly  recovered  himself,  and  when  I 
had  hastened  back  to  my  room  and  provided 
myself  with  a  revolver,  we  rushed  together  into 
the  open  air.  Nothing  was  to  be  seen,  nor  could 
we  hear  a  sound.  We  went  into  the  street, 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

which  was  lighted  by  scattered  gas  lamps,  and 
listened  for  retreating  footsteps,  but  the  street 
was  vacant  as  far  as  we  could  see  in  both  direc- 
tions, and  the  silence  of  the  night  was  like  that 
of  the  grave.  We  dragged  the  dogs  out  of  the 
kennels  to  which  they  had  retreated,  and  turned 
them  loose  in  the  hope  that  their  peculiar  in- 
telligence would  enable  them  to  guide  us  to 
some  lurking  miscreant  in  the  shrubbery  about 
the  yard  or  amid  the  trees  and  vines  in  the  ob- 
scurity of  the  orchard: — but  they  were  tremb- 
ling as  if  in  abject  fear,  we  could  get  no  help 
from  them,  and  when  released  they  bolted  into 
their  kennels  again  and  hid  themselves  in  the 
straw  at  the  farthest  corners.  It  was  evident 
that  they  had  seen  something  that  terrified  them 
greatly,  but  what  it  was  we  could  only  surmise. 
The  Scotch  terrier  was  a  gentle  creature,  and 
his  evident  alarm  did  not  so  much  surprise  me. 
The  fox-terrier,  on  the  other  hand,  was  full  of 
"bounce"  and  confidence,  and  nothing  in  canine 
or  human  shape  had  any  terrors  for  him. 
When  it  came  to  devils,  that  might  be  another 
matter — an  idea  that  passed  through  my  mind 
at  the  time,  but  did  not  then  find  lodgment.  It 
was  strengthened  in  view  of  another  incident 
which  occurred  later,  and  which  I  shall  describe 
in  a  subsequent  chapter. 

[150 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE    DEAD   WALKS 

THE  incident  of  the  flying  stone  and  the 
broken  glass  much  disquieted  us,  and  furnished 
matter  of  anxious  discussion  for  several  days. 
It  gave  us  the  first  hint  we  had  received  that 
the  influences  that  seemed  to  be  busy  about  us 
included  any  of  a  malign  or  violent  nature,  and 
inspired  a  lively  apprehension  of  other  sinister 
happenings  of  which  it  might  be  the  forerunner. 
There  was,  of  course,  the  doubt  as  to  whether 
the  affair  might  not  be  due  to  human  agency; 
had  it  stood  by  itself,  no  other  idea  would  have 
occurred  to  us : — but  although  we  tried  to 
satisfy  ourselves  that  some  reckless  or  malicious 
person  was  the  culprit,  the  attendant  circum- 
stances seemed  to  point  away  from  that  opinion. 
The  force  with  which  the  missile  was  hurled  in- 
dicated that  no  mischievous  boy  could  have 
aimed  it,  while  it  appeared  incredible  that  any 
man  would  take  the  risk  of  passing  the  clamor- 
ous dogs  and  crossing  the  wide  yard  to  take  a 
point-blank  shot  at  the  door — as  the  direct 
course  of  the  stone  showed  had  been  done. 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

Nor  could  it  have  been  thrown  from  any  con- 
siderable distance: — the  laundry  outhouse  be- 
fore mentioned,  was  not  more  than  thirty  feet 
from  the  door  and  protected  it  from  any  attack 
outside  that  limit.  It  was  the  behavior  of  the 
dogs,  however,  that  puzzled  us  the  most.  In- 
stead of  welcoming  our  coming,  as  would 
naturally  have  been  the  case,  they  shrunk  from 
the  touch  of  our  hands  and  gave  no  heed  to 
our  voices,  but  shook  and  shivered  as  if  in  an 
ague  fit. 

In  spite  of  these  facts,  the  event  so  much 
smacked  of  the  material,  and  was  so  opposed 
in  its  nature  to  anything  else  that  had  happened, 
that  we  hesitated  to  attribute  it  to  the  agency 
of  unseen  powers;  and  as  the  week  that  fol- 
lowed was  free  of  any  alarming  incident  we 
decided  to  keep  it  out  of  the  debit  column  of 
our  account  with  the  "spooks,"  and  give  them 
the  credit  of  having  had  no  part  in  it. 

It  was,  I  think  (although  I  am  uncertain 
about  the  exact  date)  about  a  fortnight  after 
the  stone-throwing  episode,  that  I  came  home 
one  afternoon  much  earlier  than  usual;  and  as 
my  wife  met  me  at  the  door  I  saw  at  once  that 
look  upon  her  face  which  had  on  several  occa- 
sions advised  me  that  something  quite  out  of 

[153] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE     WEIRD 

the  ordinary  had  happened  during  my  absence. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  for  me  to  mention,  in 
view  of  the  record  already  made  of  the  ex- 
perience she  had  shared  with  me  in  that  ill- 
omened  house,  that  among  her  notable  charac- 
teristics were  high  courage  and  self-control. 
On  this  occasion,  however,  her  appearance 
alarmed  me  greatly.  There  was  a  presence  of 
fear  upon  her;  she  was  distraite  and  nervous, 
despite  her  evident  effort  to  appear  uncon- 
cerned; and  the  strange  expression  which  I  had 
often  seen  when  her  gaze  seemed  to  follow  the 
movements  of  shapes  invisible  to  my  grosser 
sense,  still  clouded  her  eyes. 

I  did  not  at  once  question  her,  although  I 
was  consumed  with  curiosity,  and  tried  to  quiet 
her  evident,  although  suppressed,  excitement  by 
talking  of  the  commonplace  incidents  of  my 
day  in  town.  But  it  was  apparent  that  she  did 
not  hear  a  word  I  said: — indeed,  her  attitude 
and  manner  were  as  of  one  who  listened  to 
another  voice  than  mine;  and  I  soon  lapsed 
into  silence  and  sat  watching  her  with  a  grow- 
ing anxiety. 

Suddenly  the  obsession  with  which  she 
seemed  to  be  contending  passed  away: — she 
turned  impulsively  to  me  and  cried : 

"We  must  leave  this  house !    I  have  endured 

[154] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

all  I  can !    I  will  not  remain  here  another  day!" 

"I  knew  that  something  was  wrong  the 
moment  I  saw  you,"  I  said.  "Something  very 
bad  has  happened — do  you  want  to  tell  me  what 
it  is?" 

"Oh,  I  cannot,  I  cannot!"  she  exclaimed. 
"It  is  too  horrible;  it  would  frighten  you  to 
death  if  I  should  tell  you!" 

"Anything  that  you  have  gone  through,  I 
ought  to  be  able  to  hear  of,"  I  replied.  "I 
think  you  had  better  tell  me  your  story,  and  get 
it  off  your  mind,  before  our  friend  comes 
home." 

"Oh,  he  must  never  know  it!"  she  cried. 
"Promise  me  that  you  will  not  tell  him!" 

"Of  course  I  will  not  tell  him,  if  you  do  not 
wish  it,"  I  assented.  "And  now  let  me  know 
what  has  alarmed  you." 

During  our  conversation  I  had  imagined  all 
sorts  of  terrifying  incidents  as  having  occurred 
— but  my  wife's  next  words  sent  a  shiver 
through  me. 

"Deeming  has  been  here,"  she  said. 

"Deeming!"  I  exclaimed;  "that  devil!" 

"Yes,"  she  replied.  "He  did  not  try  to  harm 
me,  but  if  there  is  a  Hell  he  came  from  it.  Oh, 
he  is  so  wretched  and  unhappy !  In  spite  of  the 
horror  of  seeing  him,  I  was  never  so  sorry  for 

[155] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

any  creature  in  all  my  life.  Just  to  look  at  him 
was  enough  to  make  me  know  what  is  meant 
by  'the  torments  of  the  damned' — such  awful 
suffering!  I  shall  never  get  his  sad  and  fright- 
ful face  out  of  my  mind!" — and  she  covered 
her  face  with  her  hands,  as  if  still  seeing  the 
terrific  vision  that  she  had  described. 

When  she  had  partially  recovered  her  com- 
posure, she  began  at  the  beginning  and  told  me 
the  whole  story.  It  so  impressed  me  that,  even 
at  this  distance  of  time,  I  remember  perfectly 
every  detail  of  the  narration,  and  almost  its 
every  word,  and  with  this  recollection  I  set  it 
down. 

"It  was  about  an  hour  before  you  came 
home,"  she  began,  and  I  was  sewing  at  the 
front  window  of  my  room,  when  I  heard  the 
latch  of  the  gate  click.  I  looked  up,  and  saw 
that  someone  was  coming  into  the  yard.  It  was 
a  man — a  peddler,  I  thought — and  I  went  to 
the  door  to  tell  him  that  I  did  not  wish  to  buy 
anything.  The  door  was  open,  although  the 
outside  screen  door  was  shut  and  bolted.  I  had 
no  idea  at  all  that  it  was  not  a  living  human 
being;  but  when  I  got  to  the  door  and  looked 
at  the  figure,  which  was  standing  just  inside  the 
gate  and  facing  the  house,  I  knew  it  was  nothing 
that  belonged  to  'this  world.  It  was  misty  and 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

indistinct,  and  I  could  not  make  out  any  de- 
tails of  face  or  costume,  except  that  the  clothes 
seemed  mean  and  cheap. 

"I  don't  know  how  long  I  stood  there,"  she 
continued,  after  a  pause;  "but  by-and-by  the 
Thing  began  to  come  toward  me  up  the  walk. 
It  didn't  seem  exactly  to  walk — it  just  moved, 
I  cannot  tell  you  how;  and  as  it  got  nearer,  al- 
though I  couldn't  distinguish  the  features,  I 
began  to  see  the  clothes  quite  clearly." 

"What  were  the  clothes  like?"  I  here  inter- 
rupted. 

"They  were  the  strangest-looking  things  I 
ever  saw  on  anybody,"  she  replied.  "There 
was  no  style  or  fit  to  them,  and  they  seemed 
more  like  clothes  made  of  flour  sacks  than  any- 
thing else — very  coarse  and  ungainly.  And  an 
odd  thing  about  them  was  that  they  had  queer 
triangular  black  designs  on  them  here  and  there. 
But  the  cap  the  figure  wore  was  the  strangest 
thing  of  all : — it  was  of  dingy  white  cloth  and 
fitted  close  to  the  head,  and  it  had  a  sort  of 
flap  hanging  down  behind  almost  to  the  shoul- 
ders:— what  did  you  say?" — for  I  had  uttered 
a  sudden  ejaculation. 

"Nothing,"  I  replied: — "please  go  on." 

"Well,"  she  continued,  "the  figure  came  up 
to  the  two  steps  leading  to  the  veranda,  and  I 

[157] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

think  it  would  have  come  up  to  the  door;  but 
I  said,  'Stop!'  and  it  stood  still  where  it  was. 
It  was  still  indistinct,  and  I  felt  as  though  it 
strained  my  eyes  to  see  it;  the  face  was  vague, 
and  did  not  seem  like  any  face  I  had  ever  seen 
before. 

"I  said:  'Who  are  you,  and  what  do  you 
want?' 

"The  Thing  held  out  something  it  had  in  its 
hand,  but  I  couldn't  make  out  what  it  was,  and 
made  the  strangest  reply.  It  said:  'Madame, 
do  you  want  to  buy  some  soap?' ' 

"Gracious  powers!"  I  exclaimed: — "It  was 
Deeming? — and  he  asked  you  to  buy  soap?'1 

"I  did  not  know  it  was  Deeming  until  later," 
replied  my  wife;  "but  I  have  told  you  what  he 
said  in  his  exact  words.  What  could  he  mean 
by  offering  to  sell  me  soap?" 

"I  have  an  idea  about  that  which  I  will  tell 
you  of  presently.  But  first  let  me  hear  the  rest 
of  the  story." 

"Well,"  she  went  on,  "I  told  him  I  did  not 
want  any  soap.  'But,'  he  said,  'I  must  sell  some, 
and  I  beg  of  you  to  buy  it' — and  when  I  again 
refused,  his  voice  took  on  the  saddest,  most 
pathetic  tone,  and  he  said:  'I  thought  you 
would.  You  were  kinder  to  me  when  you  saw 
me  in  the  jail.'  'I  never  saw  you  before  in  my 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

life!'  I  said — for  truly  I  did  not  recognize 
him  even  then ;  but  he  said :  'Oh,  yes,  you  have, 
and  you  tried  to  get  Miss  Rounsfell  to  come 
and  see  me.'  'What!'  I  cried;  'are  you  Deem- 
ing?'— and  he  said:  'Yes,  madame,  I  am  that 
unfortunate  man.' 

"I  don't  quite  know  what  I  said  after  that. 
I  felt  as  though  I  should  die  of  fright,  and  I 
think  I  screamed  to  him  to  go  away,  that  the 
thought  of  his  dreadful  crimes  horrified  me  so 
that  I  could  not  look  at  him,  and  that  he  must 
never  come  to  me  again.  He  looked  at  me  re- 
proachfully and  turned  away.  I  watched  him 
go  to  the  gate,  open  it  as  anyone  might  have 
done,  and  close  it  after  him — then  he  vanished 
instantly,  the  moment  he  had  got  into  the 
street.  But  I  know  he'll  be  back!  He  is  suf- 
fering, and  I  am  the  only  one  he  can  reach.  I 
don't  know  what  he  wants,  but  I  cannot  see 
him  again.  It  will  kill  me  or  drive  me  mad 
if  we  stay  here !" 

I  certainly  felt  that  I  had  parted  with  my 
own  wits  by  the  time  this  astounding  tale  was 
concluded.  It  was  so  awful  in  its  facts  and  in 
its  suggestions,  its  details  combined  in  such  a 
mixture  of  the  hideous  and  the  grotesque,  that 
I  looked  anxiously  at  my  wife  in  the  fear  that 

[159] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

what  I  personally  knew  to  have  taken  place  in 
the  house  had  upset  her  mind,  and  produced 
this  dreadful  hallucination.  But  how  to  attri- 
bute to  hallucination  certain  items  in  the  story 
which  referred  to  facts  with  which  /  was  ac- 
quainted, but  of  which  she  was  ignorant  until 
her  experience  of  the  afternoon  had  revealed 
them  to  her? 

At  her  express  desire  I  had  told  her  nothing 
of  the  execution  which  I  had  witnessed,  and 
she  had  strictly  refrained  from  reading  about 
it  in  the  newspapers : — yet  she  had  described 
accurately,  and  in  all  its  details,  the  garb  he 
wore  on  the  scaffold — the  uncouth  trousers  and 
jacket  of  sacking,  stamped  with  the  "Broad 
Arrow"  that  marked  both  it  and  its  wearer  to 
be  the  property  of  the  Crown,  and  the  ghastly 
"death  cap,"  with  its  pendent  flap  behind  which 
was  pulled  forward  and  dropped  over  his  face 
just  before  the  trap  was  sprung! 

And  the  soap! — that,  as  I  explained  to  her, 
seemed  the  most  gruesome  feature  of  all.  My 
theory  regarding  it  may  have  been  fanciful: — 
yet  what  was  this  poor  bedeviled  ghost  more 
likely  to  have  with  him  than  a  sample  of  the 
material  that  had  been  used  upon  the  rope 
that  hung  him,  to  make  it  smooth  and  pliant, 
and  swift  of  action  in  the  noose? 
[i  60] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

But  why  had  he  wished  to  sell  it,  and  what 
help  could  he  hope  to  gain  thereby?  He  had 
evidently  come,  not  to  frighten,  but  to  crave 
relief  from  some  distressed  condition,  and 
when  he  failed  to  gain  it  he  had  gone  away 
disappointed,  but  in  sorrow  rather  than  in 
anger. 

When  morning  came,  after  a  night  of  which 
we  spent  the  greater  part  in  discussion  of  this 
new  and  disconcerting  development,  my  wife 
surprised  me  by  saying  that  she  had  changed 
her  mind  about  leaving  the  house,  and  had  de- 
cided to  remain.  I  strongly  remonstrated 
against  her  exposing  herself  to  a  more  than 
possible  danger,  but  she  continued  firm  in  her 
resolution — said  she  was  convinced  that  the 
apparition  had  no  purpose  to  harm  or  even 
alarm  her,  and  that  it  might  be  her  duty,  as 
it  would  certainly  be  her  effort,  if  it  came  again, 
to  ascertain  the  cause  of  its  disquiet,  and,  if 
possible,  remove  it. 

This  decision  caused  me  great  uneasiness  for 
several  days : — but  as  the  spectre  did  not  return 
I  began  to  think  that  its  first  visit  was  also  its 
last,  and  began  to  interest  myself  anew  in  the 
cantrips  with  which  the  house  goblins  continued 
to  amuse  themselves  and  mystify  us. 

[161] 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE    GOBLINS    OF    THE    KITCHEN 

AMONG  the  things  that  impressed  us  amid 
the  general  goings-on  about  the  house  was  the 
evidence  of  a  certain  sort  of  humor  in  the  make- 
up of  the  influences  that  were  seemingly  respon- 
sible for  them.  That  this  humor  did  not 
particularly  appeal  to  our  taste,  I  must  admit; 
it  seemed  distinctly  lacking  in  subtlety,  and  sug- 
gested that  its  authors  might  be  the  spirits  of 
certain  disembodied  low  comedians  of  the 
bladder-and-slapstick  variety.  To  some  such 
agency,  at  least,  we  came  to  attribute  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  slamming  doors,  jingling  door 
bell,  and  occasional  upsetting  of  the  parlor; 
and  from  time  to  time  other  things  occurred  to 
break  this  monotony  of  elfish  sprightliness,  and 
to  show  us  that  our  spookish  friends  were  not 
mere  creatures  of  routine,  but  were  full  of 
waggish  resource.  The  indoor  incidents  that  I 
have  already  narrated  may  seem  to  have  borne 
the  ancient  ghostly — or  "poltergeistic" — trade- 
mark, and  to  have  been  contrived  and  employed 
after  a  conventional  and  long-approved  plan: 
[162] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

— but  if  there  is  anywhere  a  Shadowland  Patent 
Office,  the  originators  of  the  pranks  I  am  about 
to  describe  should  be  enjoying  its  protection 
for  their  ingenious  inventions. 

I  was  sitting  in  my  room  at  about  noon,  one 
day,  awaiting  a  call  to  the  luncheon  which  my 
wife  was  preparing.  Suddenly  I  heard  her  call 
out  from  the  front  hall:  "Come  here,  quick! 
I  have  something  queer  to  show  you  I"  I  went 
out  at  once,  and  found  her  standing  at  the  door 
of  the  dark  chamber  I  have  previously  de- 
scribed, wherein  we  were  accustomed  to  keep 
milk,  butter,  and  other  such  provisions,  for  the 
sake  of  coolness. 

"Look  in  there,"  said  my  wife — and  I  looked 
in  accordingly;  but  I  observed  nothing  unusual, 
and  so  reported. 

"Look  up,"  she  said  again.  I  did  so,  and 
saw  a  large  milk  pan  resting  motionless  in  the 
air  just  under  the  ceiling  several  feet  above  my 
head  and  just  beneath  the  perforated  opening 
of  the  ventilator.  I  naturally  inquired  how  it 
had  got  there. 

"I  hardly  know,"  replied  my  wife;  "the  thing 
was  done  so  quickly.  The  pan  is  full  of  milk, 
and  was  resting  on  the  floor  of  the  hollow  space 
when  I  came  to  get  some  of  the  milk  for  our 
lunch.  I  had  taken  up  the  pan,  when  it  was 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

snatched  from  my  hands  and  floated  up  to  the 
place  where  you  now  see  it." 

"This  is  something  new,"  I  remarked,  "and 
rather  interesting.  I  hope  the  spooks  are  not 
drinking  the  milk" — and  as  I  spoke,  the  pan 
began  deliberately  to  descend.  When  it  was 
within  reach  I  caught  hold  of  the  handle  on 
each  side,  and  tried  to  accelerate  its  motion. 
It  stopped  immediately,  and  although  I  em- 
ployed considerable  force  I  could  not  budge  it. 
(The  effect  was  not  at  all  as  if  I  were  pulling 
against  a  physical  force  like  my  own;  the  pan 
was  as  immovable  and  inert  as  though  it  were 
a  component  part  of  the  masonry  of  the 
chamber  about  it.)  I  stood  aside,  therefore; 
whereupon  it  began  to  float  down  again,  and 
shortly  settled  in  its  former  place  on  the  floor, 
touching  it  so  lightly  that  the  contact  did  not 
cause  even  a  ripple  upon  the  surface  of  the 
milk.  We  tasted  that  milk  very  carefully 
before  venturing  to  use  it  for  our  repast,  but 
found  nothing  wrong  with  it. 

A  few  evenings  after  the  episode  of  the 
levitating  milk  pan,  we  all  three  went  into  Mel- 
bourne after  dinner  to  attend  the  theatre.  After 
the  performance  and  while  on  the  way  to  our 
train  we  passed  a  cook-shop,  in  whose  window 
Ii64] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

was  displayed  a  quantity  of  roasted  duck  and 
teal,  the  game  season  then  being  at  its  height. 
They  looked  so  appetizing  that  I  was  moved  to 
go  in  and  purchase  a  pair  of  teal  for  a  shilling 
or  two  (these  birds  were  astonishingly  plenti- 
ful, and  correspondingly  cheap  in  Australia  at 
the  time),  had  them  put  into  a  paper  box,  and 
carried  them  home  with  the  view  to  a  light  sup- 
per before  we  should  go  to  bed.  As  it  seemed 
hardly  worth  while  to  use  the  dining-room,  we 
went  into  the  kitchen;  where  I  put  the  teal  on 
a  platter  and  prepared  to  carve  them  while  my 
wife  was  arranging  the  plates  and  necessary 
cutlery.  The  carving  knife  was  in,  its  usual 
place  in  the  knife-box,  but  I  could  not  find  the 
fork  that  went  with  it,  and  so  remarked. 

"Why,"  said  my  wife,  "it's  there  with  the 
knife,  of  course."  She  spoke  with  conviction 
and  authority,  for  among  her  conspicuous  traits 
was  a  love  for  orderliness  in  all  things  pertain- 
ing to  the  household. 

Nevertheless,  the  fork  was  not  there;  nor 
could  we  find  it,  although  we  overhauled  every- 
thing in  the  cupboard  in  search  for  it.  Mean- 
while our  friend,  actuated  by  the  laudable  pur- 
pose of  keeping  out  of  the  way  of  our  prepa- 
rations, was  standing  near  the  door,  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets. 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

"I  see  it!"  he  suddenly  exclaimed,  and  with- 
drawing one  hand  from  its  confinement,  he 
pointed  upward.  My  eye  followed  the  direc- 
tion thus  indicated,  and  I  also  saw  the  missing 
utensil : — it  was  stuck  into  the  upper  part  of  the 
window  casing,  just  under  the  ceiling,  and  a 
folded  paper  was  impaled  upon  its  tines.  I  got 
upon  the  table  and  took  the  fork  from  its  posi- 
tion. It  required  considerable  force  to  do  so, 
for  the  tines  were  deeply  imbedded  in  the  wood- 
work. Then  I  unfolded  the  paper.  It  was 
about  four  inches  square,  and  drawn  upon  it, 
with  much  spirit  and  a  strict  adherence  to  the 
principles  of  realism  in  art,  were  a  skull  and 
crossbones.  These  were  done  in  a  red  medium 
which  at  first  we  thought  was  blood,  but  which 
we  finally  decided  to  be  ink,  since  it  retained  its 
color  for  weeks,  and  did  not  darken,  as  blood 
would  have  done.  There  was  no  writing  what- 
ever on  the  sheet;  therefore  we  had  no  reason 
to  regard  it  as  an  attention  from  the  "BJack 
Hand" — another  reason  being  that  we  had 
never  heard  of  the  "Black  Hand"  at  that  time. 
We  had  no  red  ink  in  the  house,  nor  any  paper 
like  that  upon  which  the  design  was  drawn — 
and  nothing  ever  occurred  to  throw  any  light 
on  the  matter. 

This  incident — like  that  of  the  hurled  stone 
[166] 


THE      HAUNTED      BUNGALOW 

— seemed  so  palpably  referable  to  human 
agency  that  it  revived  the  rather  feeble  hope 
we  had  from  time  to  time  entertained  that  we 
might,  after  all,  be  the  victims  of  some  in- 
genious trickery.  Therefore  our  friend  and  I 
devoted  one  afternoon  to  a  close  search  of  the 
house,  outhouse,  and  the  premises  generally, 
particularly  exploring  the  dusty  attic  for  con- 
cealed machinery — in  short,  for  anything  that 
might  give  a  clue  to  the  mystery.  We  emerged 
from  the  attic  looking  like  a  couple  of  sweeps, 
but  this  was  the  only  result  achieved;  nor  did 
we  accomplish  anything  else  in  all  our  investiga- 
tions. As  for  the  attic,  nobody  could  get  into 
it  otherwise  than  by  bringing  the  ladder  into 
the  house  from  the  outhouse  and  raising  it  to 
the  trap-door  in  the  ceiling  of  the  bathroom. 
As  to  outside  origin  of  the  various  pranks  that 
had  been  played  upon  us,  we  could  see  no  way 
in  which  they  could  be  performed  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  we  had  every  facility  to  observe  the 
approach  of  any  mischief-maker: — since  we 
had  a  wide  street  on  two  sides  of  us,  and  the 
houses  on  each  of  the  other  two  sides  were  at 
least  a  hundred  yards  away.  The  fact  that 
most  of  the  "manifestations"  with  which  we 
had  been  favored  had  occurred  in  the  daytime 
added  to  the  puzzle;  the  only  two  things  that 

[167] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

we  could  explain  as  perhaps  the  work  of  beings 
like  ourselves  (the  episodes  of  the  thrown 
stone  and  of  the  fork)  had  occurred  under  the 
cover  of  darkness: — therefore,  hoping  that, 
with  these  data  to  go  upon,  we  might  get  to  the 
cause  of  our  annoyances,  we  set  a  trap  with  the 
hope  that  if  any  practical  joker  were  at  work, 
he  might  walk  into  it. 

In  furtherance  of  this  purpose  I  sent  my  wife 
and  our  friend  to  the  theatre,  a  few  evenings 
later,  accompanying  them  to  the  railway  station 
after  extinguishing  all  the  lights  in  the  house  in 
order  to  create  the  impression  in  the  mind  of 
any  possible  watcher  of  our  movements  that  we 
were  all  three  equally  on  pleasure  bent  in  town, 
and  returning  by  a  devious  route  which  finally 
brought  me  by  a  scramble  over  the  orchard 
fence  to  the  back  door.  I  quietly  let  myself 
into  the  house,  arranged  an  easy  chair  at  a 
point  where  I  could  command  the  hall  in  both 
directions,  and  sat  down  amid  utter  darkness, 
with  my  revolver  in  my  jacket  pocket  and  my 
shot  gun,  heavily  charged  in  both  barrels,  across 
my  knees.  I  was  fully  determined  to  test  the 
materiality — or  otherwise — of  any  shape  that 
might  present  itself,  by  turning  my  artillery 
loose  thereon  without  any  preliminary  word  of 
challenge;  but  although  my  vigil  lasted  until 
[168] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

midnight,  I  was  oBliged  to  report  to  my  return- 
ing companions  that  nothing  whatever  had  hap- 
pened. 

I  may  add  that  that  evening  was  the  longest 
and  least  agreeable  I  ever  experienced. 

It  may  be  that  the  incident  with  which  I  shall 
close  this  rather  rambling  chapter  was  promoted 
by  the  same  humorists  who  devised  the  conceit 
of  the  floating  milk  pan,  and  was  employed  as 
a  means  of  enabling  us  to  recognize  therein  the 
authors  of  the  former  whimsicality.  The  two 
pleasantries  seemed,  at  all  events,  to  have  been 
conceived  in  the  same  spirit,  and  although  both 
were  equally  odd  and  purposeless,  the  superior 
elaborateness  of  the  second  distinctly  showed 
an  advance  over  the  first,  and  gained  our  ap- 
plause accordingly.  There  was  no  connection 
between  these  episodes  in  point  of  time;  in 
fact,  the  second  occurred  several  months  after 
the  first,  in  the  hottest  part  of  the  year. 

Our  friend  being  a  Briton  by  birth  and  an 
Australian  by  adoption,  he  had  enjoyed  rather 
a  narrow  experience  in  dietetics,  particularly  in 
the  vegetable  line.  During  the  early  part  of 
our  housekeeping  we  had  found  much  difficulty 
in  securing  for  our  table  any  garden  delicacies 
outside  the  conventional  list  of  potatoes,  "vege- 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

table  marrow,"  and  cauliflower — until  Provi- 
dence brought  to  our  back  door  an  amiable 
Chinese  huckster,  who,  with  several  com- 
patriots, had  established  a  small  truck-farm  in 
the  neighborhood.  Earnest  representations  re- 
garding our  vegetableless  conditions  inspired 
his  interest,  and  the  promise  of  good  prices 
awakened  his  cupidity;  and  as  a  result  of  the 
agreement  of  these  motives  it  was  not  long 
before  our  table  greatly  improved. 

And  I  cannot  help  saying — although  this  is 
a  digression — that  our  often-expressed  words 
of  satisfaction  to  our  purveyor  stimulated  him 
to  produce  and  bring  to  us  everything  of  the 
best  that  he  could  raise.  In  his  way  he  was  an 
artist,  with  an  artist's  craving  for  praise — so 
that  now  and  then  he  would  appear  with  a  gift 
of  some  new  product  for  us  to  try,  and  occa- 
sionally with  a  small  packet  of  choice  tea  or 
some  other  Celestial  delicacy,  for  which  he 
would  invariably  refuse  payment. 

"You  should  not  bring  me  these  things,"  my 
wife  said  to  him  one  day.  "You  can't  afford 
them." 

"Me  likee  bling  'em,"  he  replied.  "An'  me 
likee  you.  You  no  ploud.  Mos'  lady  too 
ploud" — and  swinging  his  baskets  to  his  shoul- 
der he  departed. 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 


It  was  my  wife's  delight  to  tempt  our  friend's 
appetite  with  all  sorts  of  culinary  novelties, 
which  the  new  and  more  liberal  order  of  things 
allowed  her  to  prepare.  With  true  British  con- 
servatism he  would  venture  gingerly  upon  an 
unfamiliar  dish,  admit  it  "wasn't  half  bad," 
and  end  by  eating  as  much  of  it  as  both  of  us 
others  together.  It  was  finally  discovered  that 
a  particularly  effective  way  of  appeal  to  his 
nature  was  through  the  medium  of  baked 
stuffed  tomatoes : — of  these  he  seemed  never  to 
have  enough,  and,  as  a  consequence,  they  were 
frequently  upon  our  bill-of-fare  during  the 
summer.  It  seems  incredible — and  lamentable 
— that  a  man  should  have  got  well  into  the 

»/ 
fifties  without  ever  having  eaten  a  baked  stuffed 

tomato: — such,  however,  was  our  friend's  un- 
happy case,  and  my  wife  made  strenuous  efforts 
to  ameliorate  it. 

"I  have  a  treat  for  you  to-night,"  she  said 
to  our  friend.  "Guess  what  it  is." 

"Baked  stuffed  tomatoes,"  he  responded 
promptly — and  baked  stuffed  tomatoes  it  was. 

"Now,"  continued  my  wife,  "you  two  men 
must  eat  your  dinner  in  the  kitchen  to-night. 
The  woman  who  cooks  for  me  is  ill  to-day,  and 
you  will  have  to  take  pot-luck.  I  have  let  the 
fire  in  the  stove  go  out,  and  have  been  using 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

the  gas  range;  so  you  will  find  the  kitcheu 
cooler  than  the  dining-room,  and  by  eating  there 
you  will  save  me  work,  besides." 

So  we  went  into  the  kitchen,  where  we  found 
the  table  already  laid  for  us. 

"Before  we  sit  down,"  said  my  wife,  turning 
smilingly  to  our  friend,  "I  am  going  to  show 
you  the  treat  you  were  so  clever  in  guessing. 
But  you  are  not  to  have  it  at  once;  that  will 
come  after  the  cold  meat.  The  tomatoes  are 
nice  and  hot,  and  I  have  put  them  in  here  to 
keep  them  from  cooling  too  fast:" — and  with 
these  words  she  kneeled  upon  the  floor  and 
opened  the  iron  door  which  shut  in  a  wide  but 
shallow  cavity  in  the  masonry  that  formed  the 
base  of  the  open  fireplace. 

This  fireplace  was  an  unusual  feature  in  a 
modern  kitchen,  and  we,  at  least,  had  never 
put  it  to  any  use.  It  projected  slightly  into  the 
room,  and  on  the  sides  of  it,  and  against  the 
wall  in  each  case,  were,  respectively,  the  cook 
stove  and  gas  range.  Under  its  hearth,  and  but 
a  few  inches  above  the  level  of  the  room,  was 
the  hollow  space  I  have  mentioned — I  believe 
it  was  what  is  sometimes  called  a  "Dutch 
oven" — eight  inches  high,  perhaps,  two  feet 
wide,  and  eighteen  inches  deep.  From  this 
space  my  wife  partly  drew  out  for  our  inspeo 
[172] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

tion  an  iron  baking  pan,  in  which  an  even  dozen 
of  deliciously  cooked,  golden-and-red,  crumb- 
stuffed  tomatoes  were  sociably  shouldering  each 
other: — then,  after  hearing  our  expressions  of 
satisfaction  with  their  appearance,  she  pushed 
the  pan  back  again,  closed  the  iron  door,  and 
sat  down  with  us  to  dinner. 

The  table  stood  against  the  wall,  directly 
under  the  window.  My  wife  was  seated  at  the 
end  next  to  the  fireplace,  I  was  opposite  her, 
and  our  friend  was  at  the  side,  his  back  to  the 
hall  door  and  his  face  to  the  window.  Thus  he 
and  my  wife  were  each  within  two  feet  of  the 
fireplace  and  the  chamber  under  it,  and  the  iron 
door  guarding  our  treasure  was  in  direct  range 
of  my  own  eyes  from  the  position  I  occupied. 

Having  despatched  the  earlier  portions  of 
the  repast,  my  wife  arose,  removed  the  used 
dishes  to  a  side  table,  set  others  in  their  places, 
and  with  the  remark:  "Now  for  the  to- 
matoes I"  swung  open  the  iron  door  under  the 
fireplace.  The  interior,  however,  was  abso- 
lutely empty: — the  tomatoes,  and  the  heavy 
baking  pan  that  had  held  them,  had  disap- 
peared! 

Our  friend  and  I  sprang  from  our  chairs  in 
astonishment  and  incredulity — but  the  fact  was 
undoubted;  the  treat  which  had  been  so  much 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

anticipated  had  been  snatched,  as  it  were, 'from 
our  very  lips.  Our  friend  turned  from  one  to 
the  other  of  us  a  face  so  comically  set  between 
wonder  and  disappointment  that  I  burst  out 
laughing  in  spite  of  myself.  But  my  ill-timed 
levity  was  promptly  checked  by  my  wife,  who 
was  at  the  moment  giving  a  competent  imita- 
tion of  a  lioness  robbed  of  her  whelps. 

"Oh!"  she  cried,  seemingly  addressing  noth- 
ing in  particular,  although  she  might  have  felt 
— as  I  did — that  she  was  speaking  to  a  derisive 
audience;  "that  is  too  bad  of  you!  To  steal 
my  tomatoes,  when  I  worked  over  them  so 
long!  Bring  them  back  instantly!"  But  they 
remained  invisible,  and  over  all  a  sarcastic 
silence  brooded.  Then  she  turned  upon  us  un- 
fortunate men. 

"Have  you  been  playing  me  a  trick?"  she 
demanded.  "Do  you  know  what  has  become 
of  those  tomatoes?"  "Certainly  not" — this  to 
both  questions.  Neither  of  us  had  moved  from 
his  chair  since  we  sat  down  to  dinner  and  she 
had  shown  us  the  pan  and  its  contents.  Nor 
had  she,  for  that  matter,  except  when  she  had 
risen  to  change  the  dishes,  and  even  then  she 
had  not  left  the  room. 

All  that  could  be  said  was  that  the  tomatoes 
had  been  exhibited,  and  then  had  been  shut  up 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

again  behind  the  door.  There  was  no  possible 
doubt  about  that — it  was  equally  certain  that 
they  had  vanished.  Very  well,  then  let  us 
search  for  them !  This  we  did,  and  with  great 
thoroughness,  all  over  the  house,  and  in  every 
part  of  the  grounds;  the  outhouse  at  the  back 
was  also  carefully  inspected.  I  even  got  the 
ladder  and  went,  in  turn,  upon  the  roofs  of 
both  structures,  looked  down  the  chimneys: — 
"nothing  doing"  (to  employ  an  Oriental  ex- 
pression not  then,  unhappily,  in  use) ;  nowhere 
any  trace  of  the  missing  pan  or  of  the  tomatoes. 

We  gave  it  up  finally,  and  went  back  to  our 
dessert  and  coffee.  My  wife  refused  to  be 
satisfied  that  the  tomatoes  were  actually  gone. 
She  was  constantly  getting  up  to  open  the  iron 
door  and  view  the  emptiness  behind  it — as  if 
she  expected  the  apparent  dematerialization  of 
the  pan  and  tomatoes  to  be  reversed, — while 
our  friend  looked  on  with  an  aspect  of  forced 
resignation. 

I  left  them  after  a  time,  and  went  out  for  an 
after-dinner  smoke  on  the  back  doorstep.  I 
had  hardly  lighted  my  pipe  when  I  heard  a  cry 
blended  of  two  voices  in  the  kitchen — a  shriek 
from  my  wife,  and  a  mildly  profane  ejaculation 
from  our  friend.  Rushing  in,  I  saw  an  aston- 
ishing sight — our  friend,  with  staring  eyes  and 
[175] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

blanched  face,  supporting  himself  against  the 
table  as  if  staggered  by  a  blow,  my  wife  kneel- 
ing in  front  of  the  open  iron  door  beneath  the 
fireplace,  and  the  baking  pan  and  its  dozen 
tomatoes  lying  before  her  on  the  floor  I 

It  was  some  time  before  I  could  get  a  co- 
herent account  of  what  had  happened.  It  was 
finally  developed,  however,  that  after  I  had  left 
the  room  the  conversation  continued  on  the 
inexplicable  conduct  of  the  tomatoes.  "I  can't 
believe  they  are  not  there!"  my  wife  asserted, 
and,  for  the  dozenth  time  or  so,  she  again  knelt 
on  the  floor  and  again  opened  the  door. 

"I  was  standing  right  behind  her/'  said  our 
friend,  "and  saw  her  swing  the  door  open,  but 
there  was  nothing  inside.  At  the  same  instant 
I  heard  a  thump  on  the  floor,  and  there  the 
whole  outfit  was,  just  in  front  of  her.  I  don't 
know  where  the  things  came  from — perhaps 
down  the  chimney: — at  any  rate,  one  moment 
there  was  nothing  there ;  the  next,  the  pan  and 
the  tomatoes  were  on  the  floor." 

After  we  had  regained  our  composure  we 
considered  what  we  should  do  with  the  to- 
matoes. Our  friend  said  he  didn't  think  he 
wanted  any  of  them,  and  I  confessed  to  an 
equal  indifference — so  capricious,  and  often  in- 
fluenced by  slight  circumstances,  is  the  appetite ! 

[176] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

My  wife,  as  usual,  settled  the  matter.  "Take 
them  away!"  she  said.  "Throw  them  into  the 
garbage  barrel  1" — which  was  accordingly  done ; 
melancholy  end  of  a  culinary  triumph !  Yet  we 
ought  at  least  to  have  tasted  those  tomatoes: 
under  the  title  "tomato  a  la  diable"  they  might 
have  found  a  place  in  the  cook  books. 


CHAPTER   X 

A    SPECTRAL    BURGLARY 

I  CANNOT  but  consider  it  an  interesting  cir- 
cumstance that  the  varied  happenings  in  the 
House  on  the  Hill  seemed  to  arrange  them- 
selves into  two  rather  strictly  defined  classes 
— the  sportive  and  the  terrible — and  that  the 
respective  influences  responsible  for  them  ap- 
peared carefully  to  refrain  from  interfering 
with  each  others'  functions  or  prerogatives.  As 
among  our  earthly  acquaintances  we  number 
some  who  are  entirely  deficient  in  appreciation 
of  the  ridiculous,  and  others  so  flippant  as  to 
have  no  sense  of  the  serious,  so,  it  seemed  to 
us,  the  unseen  friends  who  so  diversely  made 
their  presence  known  were  in  like  manner  to 
be  differentiated. 

In  this  connection  another  singular  fact  is 
to  be  noted.  While  the  clownish  performers  in 
the  juggling  of  the  milk  pan,  the  prestidigita- 
tion of  the  baked  stuffed  tomatoes,  and  other 
such  specialties,  always  remained  invisible,  even 
to  my  wife,  what  I  may  call  the  more  dramatic 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

manifestations  were  accompanied  by  appari- 
tions that  were  the  evident  actors  in  them.  It 
also  occurred  to  us  that  if  the  "acts"  that  were 
staged  for  our  benefit  were  to  be  regarded  as 
presenting  what  passed  for  entertainment  in 
the  Dark  World,  there  must  be  drawn  there, 
as  here,  a  sharp  line  of  distinction  between 
vaudeville  and  "the  legitimate;"  incidentally, 
too,  it  would  seem  that  ghostly  audiences  were 
like  many  in  the  flesh  in  their  capacity  for 
being  easily  entertained. 

However  that  may  be,  we  somehow  came  to 
the  opinion  that  while  the  more  impressive  of 
the  phenomena  with  which  we  were  favored 
appeared  to  be  due  to  the  action  of  beings  that 
had  aforetime  been  upon  the  earth — for  in 
every  such  case  the  attending  spectres  were  to 
be  identified  as  simulacra  of  persons  whose  pre- 
vious existence  was  known  to  some  one  (and 
generally  all)  of  us, — the  tricksy  antics  that 
seemed  to  come  from  Nowhere  might  find  their 
impulse  in  elementary  entities  or  forces  which 
had  not  yet  exercised  their  activities  upon  the 
earth  plane  (and,  indeed,  might  never  be  in- 
tended to  do  so),  and  thus  had  never  assumed 
a  material  form.  I  do  not  put  this  forward  as 
a  theory,  but  simply  as  a  passing  impression 
that  lightly  brushed  our  minds: — and  to  repel 
[179] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

the  temptation  of  being  led  into  the  seductive 
regions  of  speculation,  I  will  re-assume  my  role 
as  a  mere  narrator  of  facts  and  describe  a  quite 
inexplicable  affair  that  occurred  near  the  close 
of  our  tenancy. 

The  bedroom  which  I  have  before  described 
as  being  at  the  front  of  the  house,  with  two  win- 
dows overlooking  the  veranda,  was  occupied 
at  night  by  my  wife  and  myself.  Between  the 
windows  was  a  ponderous  mahogany  dressing 
table,  surmounted  by  a  large  mirror.  This 
article  of  furniture  was  so  broad  that  it  ex- 
tended on  either  side  beyond  the  inner  casing 
of  the  windows,  and  so  heavy  that  it  required 
the  united  strength  of  both  of  us  to  move  it — 
as,  during  the  cleaning  of  the  room,  we  some- 
times had  to  do.  The  windows  were  pro- 
tected by  wire  screens,  secured  by  stout  bolts 
which  were  shot  into  sockets  in  the  woodwork, 
and  fitted  flush  with  the  surface  of  the  outer 
window  casing.  In  February — the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing — the  weather  was  at  its 
hottest,  and  we  slept  at  night  with  the  windows 
open,  trusting  our  security  to  the  strong  wire 
screens. 

One  morning,  after  an  untroubled  night's 
sleep,  I  awoke  soon  after  sunrise,  and  from  my 
[i  80] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

place  in  bed,  nearest  the  window,  looked  lazily 
out  upon  the  day.  Still  half-asleep,  I  lay  for 
some  time  without  noting  anything  unusual; 
but  as  my  sensibilities  revived  I  observed  that 
the  screen  was  missing  from  the  left-hand  win- 
dow, and  that  the  dressing  table,  instead  of 
standing  in  its  usual  place  against  the  wall,  was 
turned  half-way  around,  and  projected  at  right 
angles  into  the  room.  I  was  out  of  bed  in  an 
instant,  and  at  the  window — looking  out  of 
which  I  saw  the  screen  lying  flat  on  the  floor 
of  the  veranda.  I  went  out  and  examined  it. 
It  was  uninjured,  and  the  bolts  still  projected 
from  either  side  to  show  that  they  had  not  been 
drawn ;  but  two  deep  grooves  in  the  woodwork 
of  the  casing  indicated  that  the  screen  had 
been  dragged  outward  from  its  place.  How 
this  damage  could  have  been  done  to  the  stout 
casing,  without  marring  in  the  least  the  com- 
paratively light  frame  of  the  screen,  I  could  by 
no  means  understand — particularly  as  there 
was  no  possible  way  by  which  one  could  get  a 
hold  upon  the  outside  of  the  screen  except  by 
the  use  of  screws  or  gimlets  to  act  as  holds  for 
one's  hands ;  and  of  these  there  were  no  marks 
whatever. 

I  had  made  this  examination  so  quietly  that 
I  had  not  awakened  my  wife: — now,  however, 
[181] 


TRUE     TALES     OF    THE    WEIRD 

I   returned  to  the  bedroom  and  aroused  her. 

Her  first  thought,  on  seeing  the  condition  of 
affairs,  was  that  burglars  had  visited  us: — my 
idea  had  been  the  same  until  I  had  observed  the 
peculiar  facts  that  I  have  just  noted.  Tacitly 
accepting  this  theory  for  the  moment,  I 
assisted  her  in  making  an  inventory  of  our 
portable  valuables.  While  I  satisfied  myself 
that  my  purse  and  watch  were  safe,  my  wife 
took  her  keys  from  under  the  pillow  (where 
she  always  kept  them  at  night)  and  went  to  the 
dressing  table,  in  one  of  whose  drawers  was 
her  jewel  box.  The  drawer  was  locked,  and 
so  was  the  jewel  box,  and  the  latter,  on  being 
opened,  seemed  to  hold  all  its  usual  contents 
intact. 

"No,"  she  said,  after  mentally  checking  off 
the  various  articles;  "everything  is  here;  noth- 
ing has  been  taken.  Wait!  I  am  wrong;  one 
thing  is  missing.  Do  you  remember  that 
rhinestone  brooch  in  the  shape  of  a  butterfly 
you  bought  for  me  one  evening  in  Paris,  four 
years  ago?" 

"Why,  yes,"  I  replied;  "I  got  it  in  a  shop 
under  the  arcades  on  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  and 
paid  five  francs  for  it.  You  don't  mean  to  say 
that  the  thieves,  or  our  friends  the  'spooks,'  or 
whoever  it  may  be,  have  taken  that  trifle  and 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

left  your  diamond  rings  and  other  things  really 
valuable  untouched!" 

Yet  such  appeared  to  be  the  case — the  cheap 
and  unimportant  brooch  was  the  only  thing 
unaccounted  for,  nor  had  anything  else  been  dis- 
turbed throughout  the  house.  It  seemed  in- 
credible that  any  burglar  who  had  passed  merely 
the  kindergarten  stage  of  schooling  in  his  pro- 
fession could  have  been  deceived  into  suppos- 
ing that  this  commonplace  article  de  Pans  had 
any  value;  besides,  why  should  this  have  been 
taken  and  the  real  jewelry  that  lay  with  it  in 
the  same  box  have  been  left?  And  how  had  it 
been  extracted  from  the  locked  box  inside  the 
locked  dressing  table?  The  keys  of  both  were 
on  the  same  ring  under  my  wife's  pillow,  and 
although  a  robber  might  extract  them  without 
awaking  her,  it  seemed  unreasonable  to  suppose 
he  would  take  the  additional  risk  of  replacing 
them  when  he  had  completed  his  work.  But 
for  these  and  other  questions  that  presented 
themselves  we  could  find  no  satisfactory  an- 
swers. 

We  ate  our  breakfast  in  a  state  of  mild  ex- 
pectation that  the  brooch  might  be  returned  as 
mysteriously  as  it  had  been  taken.  The  ad- 
venture seemed  to  be  constructed  on  lines 
similar  to  those  laid  down  in  the  affair  of  the 

[183] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

baked  stuffed  tomatoes,  and  we  were  disposed 
to  credit  it  to  the  same  agency; — but  if  the 
sprites  who  were  responsible  for  the  former 
prank  had  contrived  this  later  one  also,  they 
either  intended  to  carry  it  no  further,  or  were 
preparing  a  different  denouement.  This  last 
conjecture  proved  to  be  the  true  one,  but  we 
had  to  wait  a  long  time  for  the  fact  to  be  de- 
veloped. 

We  gave  our  "spooks"  sufficient  time  to  con- 
summate their  joke  (if,  indeed,  they  were  re- 
sponsible for  it),  and  finally  concluding  that 
they  were  not  inclined  to  embrace  the  oppor- 
tunity, we  again  took  under  consideration  the 
burglar  theory,  and  I  went  to  the  local  police 
station  to  report  the  occurrence.  Two  heavy- 
weight constables  returned  with  me  to  the  house 
and  gravely  inspected  the  premises.  Their 
verdict  was  speedy  and  unanimous: — "House- 
breakers." There  had  been  similar  breakings- 
and-enterings  in  the  town  recently — therefore 
the  facts  were  obvious.  I  showed  them  the 
drawer  and  jewel  box,  and  described  the  sin- 
gular and  modest  spoil  of  the  supposed  thieves; 
I  also  exhibited  the  unmarred  frame  of  the 
screen  and  the  scarred  window  casing,  and 
asked  them  how  they  explained  that.  This 
puzzled  them,  but  they  fell  back  easily  upon  the 
[184] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

obvious  and  practical.  "Housebreakers,"  they 
repeated.  'We  shall  make  a  report" — and 
marched  away  as  ponderously  as  they  had 
come.  I  did  not  acquaint  them  with  the  goings- 
on  in  that  house  for  a  year  past: — had  I  done 
so,  my  prompt  apprehension  as  a  suspicious 
character  would  doubtless  have  followed. 

In  July  of  the  following  year  I  went  from 
Philadelphia,  where  I  was  then  living,  to  spend 
a  few  days  with  my  wife  at  Savin  Rock  (near 
New  Haven,  Connecticut),  where  I  had  rented 
a  cottage  for  the  summer.  The  morning  after 
my  arrival  I  was  awakened  by  my  wife,  who 
had  risen  but  the  moment  before,  and  who,  as 
I  opened  my  eyes,  exclaimed  excitedly:  "Look! 
Look  at  what  is  on  the  bureau!"  Following 
with  my  eyes  the  direction  of  her  pointed  finger, 
I  saw  upon  the  bureau  the  pin-cushion  into 
which  I  had  stuck  my  scarf  pin  the  night  before, 
beside  which,  and  in  the  centre  of  the  cushion, 
appeared  the  butterfly  brooch  which  I  had  last 
previously  seen  in  Australia,  sixteen  months 
before ! 

"Where  did  you  find  it?"  I  asked,  forgetting 
for  the  moment,  and  in  my  half-awake  condi- 
tion, the  incident  in  which  it  had  figured  as 
above  described. 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

"I  didn't  find  it,"  my  wife  replied;  "it  is  less 
than  a  minute  ago  that  I  saw  it.  It  was  not  on 
the  pin  cushion  last  night;  how  in  the  world 
did  it  come  here?" — "And  from  where?" — 
thus  I  completed  the  question. 

Neither  of  us  had  any  reply  to  this: — so  I 
merely  advanced  the  suggestion  that  it  was 
pleasant  to  think  that  our  spookish  friends  had 
not  altogether  forgotten  us,  although  on  our 
part  we  had  no  desire  to  cultivate  their  better 
acquaintance.  This  expression  of  sentiment 
may  have  had  its  effect: — at  any  rate,  with  the 
return  of  the  brooch  came  an  end  to  the  mys- 
tery of  "The  House  on  the  Hill." 


[186] 


CHAPTER    XI 

"REST,  REST,  PERTURBED  SPIRIT!" 

I  THINK  it  was  because  such  lighter  incidents 
as  those  that  I  have  described  in  the  two  pre- 
ceding chapters  were  freely  introduced  among 
more  weighty  happenings,  and  thus  gave  a  cer- 
tain measure  of  relief  from  them,  that  we  man- 
aged to  fill  out  our  term  in  the  House  on  the 
Hill.  Absurd  and  impish  as  the  general  run 
of  these  performances  was,  there  was  still  an 
element  of  what  I  may  almost  call  intimacy  in 
them — a  sort  of  appeal,  as  it  were,  to  look 
upon  the  whole  thing  as  a  joke;  which,  while 
they  caused  us  amazement,  brought  us  no  real 
alarm.  Much  as  has  been  attributed  to  the 
influence  of  fear,  I  believe  curiosity  to  be  the 
stronger  passion ;  and  few  days  passed  without 
a  fillip  being  given  to  our  interest  by  some  new 
absurdity,  while  events  of  graver  suggestion 
were  few  and  far  between. 

I  need  not  say  that  the  affair  which  had  been 
most  sinister  and  disquieting  was  the  coming 
to  my  wife  of  the  evident  apparition  of  Deem- 
ing. This  visitation  had  been  so  awful  and  un- 

[is?] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

earthly  that  by  tacit  agreement  we  had  not 
spoken  of  it  since  the  afternoon  of  its  occur- 
rence : — yet  I  had  never  been  able  to  get  it  out 
of  my  mind,  and  every  day  I  spent  in  town  was 
darkened  by  forebodings  of  what  might  happen 
at  home  before  my  return.  Each  night  as  I 
came  in  sight  of  the  house  I  looked  anxiously 
for  the  figure  of  my  wife  standing  on  the 
veranda  to  welcome  me,  and  each  night  I  drew 
a  breath  of  relief  as  I  saw  in  her  serene  and 
smiling  face  that  my  apprehensions  had  been 
vain;  and  so  I  came  by  degrees  to  dismiss  my 
fears  in  the  conviction  that  that  uneasy  spirit 
had  been  laid  at  last. 

But  this  comforting  assurance  suddenly 
failed  me,  when,  one  evening  about  two  weeks 
after  the  ghost's  first  coming,  I  read  in  my 
wife's  eyes  that  it  had  appeared  again.  Yet, 
greatly  to  my  relief,  I  saw  no  fear  in  them,  but, 
rather,  an  expression  of  pity.  Her  manner  was 
quiet  and  composed,  but  I  was  sure  she  had 
been  weeping. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  in  reply  to  my  anxious  in- 
quiries; "Deeming  has  been  here,  and  I  have 
been  crying.  Oh,  that  poor  tortured,  despair- 
ing soul ! — he  is  in  Hell,  and  one  infinitely 
worse  than  that  we  were  taught  to  believe  in;  a 
Hell  where  conscience  never  sleeps,  and  where 
[188] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

he  sees  what  he  might  have  been — and  now 
never  can  be!  He  frightened  me  terribly  at 
first,  but  I  know  he  tried  not  to  do  so,  and  now 
I  am  glad  he  came,  for  I  believe  I  have  helped 
him,  although  I  cannot  understand  how.  I  feel 
weak  and  faint,  for  I  have  been  under  a  great 
strain,  but  I  shall  be  better  now  that  you  have 
come  home — and  I  know,  too,  that  I  shall  never 
see  him  again.  Come  into  my  room,  and  I 
will  tell  you  all  about  it:" — and  when  I  had 
done  so,  and  had  tried,  with  some  success,  to 
quiet  the  agitation  that,  in  spite  of  her  words, 
still  possessed  her,  she  told  me  the  amazing 
story  of  her  experience. 

"It  was  about  eleven  o'clock  this  forenoon," 
she  began,  "and  I  was  alone  in  the  house — in 
the  kitchen.  I  had  been  airing  the  house,  and 
all  the  doors  and  windows  were  open,  although 
the  screens  were  in  place.  All  at  once  I  heard 
the  back  gate  creak  as  it  always  does  when  it 
opens,  and  'Schneider'  and  'Tokio' '  (such 
were  the  names  of  our  two  dogs)  "who  were 
loose  in  the  yard,  barking  at  somebody.  I  sup- 
posed it  was  the  butcher  or  the  grocery  man 
and  looked  out  the  back  door — and  just  then 
the  dogs  came  tearing  by  with  their  tails  be- 
tween their  legs,  and  disappeared  around  the 
corner  of  the  house.  The  next  instant  I  saw 
[189] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

a  man  standing  just  inside  the  gate.  He  was 
not  looking  at  me,  but  his  eyes  seemed  to  be 
following  the  flight  of  the  dogs;  then  they 
turned  to  meet  mine,  and  I  saw  that  it  was 
Deeming.  I  shut  the  back  door  instantly  and 
locked  it — then  ran  to  the  front  door  and 
fastened  that;  I  wanted  to  close  and  bolt  the 
windows,  too,  but  did  not  dare  do  so,  for  I  was 
afraid  I  might  look  out  of  any  one  of  them 
and  see  him.  I  prayed  to  God  that  he  might 
go  away,  but  he  did  not.  I  stood  in  the  hall 
and  saw  him  move  by  outside  the  window  of 
your  room.  By-and-by  he  passed  the  dining- 
room  window  on  the  other  side  of  me  as  I  stood 
there,  having  gone  completely  around  the 
house.  But  he  did  not  look  in. 

"I  did  not  see  anything  more  of  him  for 
some  time,  and  I  began  to  think  that  he  had 
given  up  trying  to  communicate  with  me,  and 
had  gone  away  again.  I  finally  went  into  the 
bedroom  and  peeped  out  into  the  veranda.  He 
was  there,  standing  near  and  facing  the  door! 
He  did  not  seem  to  notice  me,  and  I  watched 
him  for  some  time.  He  was  dressed  just  as 
he  had  been  before,  and  looked  the  same;  but 
I  could  see  him  much  more  clearly  than  the  first 
time,  and  if  I  had  not  known  who  it  was,  I 
should  have  thought  it  was  a  living  man. 
[190] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

"I  don't  know  how  it  was,  but  as  I  stood 
watching  him  I  found  that  I  wasn't  afraid  of 
him  at  all.  He  looked  so  sad  and  pitiful,  and 
stood  there  so  patiently,  that  I  began  to  feel 
as  I  might  toward  some  poor  beggar;  he  seemed 
just  like  one,  waiting  for  something  to  eat. 
Then  I  thought  how  he  had  pleaded  the  other 
day  for  assistance,  and  how  I  had  turned  him 
away — and  although  it  was  like  death  to  face 
him  again,  I  went  into  the  hall  and  opened  the 
door. 

"The  screen  door  was  closed  and  locked,  and 
we  looked  at  each  other  through  it.  I  could  see 
every  detail  of  the  figure's  face  and  dress  as  it 
stood  there  in  the  bright  sunlight: — it  was 
within  three  feet  of  me,  and  it  was  Deeming's 
without  a  shadow  of  a  doubt. 

"I  don't  know  how  long  I  stood  there.  I 
seemed  to  be  in  another  world,  and  in  a  strange 
atmosphere  which  he  may  have  brought  with 
him.  I  had  to  make  a  strong  effort,  but  finally 
succeeded  in  seeing  and  thinking  clearly,  and  as 
he  only  looked  appealingly  at  me  and  seemed 
not  to  be  able  to  say  anything,  I  was  the  first 
to  speak. 

"  'I  know  who  you  are,  this  time,'  I  said.  'I 
told  you  never  to  come  here  again.  Why  have 
you  done  so?' 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

1  'Madame,'  he  replied,  'I  have  come  for 
help/ 

"  'I  told  you  the  other  day  I  could  do  nothing 
for  you,'  I  said. 

'  'But  you  can,  if  you  will,'  he  answered,  'and 
there  is  nobody  else  I  can  reach.  Don't  be 
afraid  of  me — I  won't  hurt  you.  I  need  some 
one  to  show  me  Christian  charity,  and  I  thought 
you  were  kind  and  would  help  me.' ' 

"'Christian  charity!'1  I  exclaimed,  inter- 
rupting the  recital  for  the  first  time :  "was  that 
what  he  said?" 

"Those  were  his  exact  words,"  said  my  wife; 
"and  it  seemed  almost  blasphemy  for  such  a 
creature  t(5  use  them." 

"They  seem  to  me,"  I  commented,  "more 
like  one  of  those  stock  phrases  of  which  nearly 
every  man  has  some,  of  one  sort  or  another. 
Do  you  remember,  in  the  letter  Deeming  wrote 
to  you  from  the  jail  when  you  could  not  induce 
Miss  Rounsfell  to  come  to  see  him,  how  he 
said  he  was  sorry  you  did  not  find  her  'as  Chris- 
tianlike  as  yourself?'  It  may  be  a  small  point, 
but  this  appeal  to  your  'Christian  charity'  seems 
to  confirm  your  belief  that  it  was  the  apparition 
of  Deeming  that  made  it  to  you  to-day.  But 
what  happened  then?" 

"Well,"  said  she,  taking  up  the  thread  of  her 
[192] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

•  I  • 

story,  "while  he  was  saying  this  he  kept  his 
eyes  on  mine — great,  pleading  eyes  like  those 
of  a  dog: — they  made  me  think  he  was  trying 
to  say  things  for  which  he  could  not  find  words, 
and — I  don't  know  why — I  began  to  feel  sorry 
for  him. 

1  'I  don't  understand  at  all  what  you  mean/ 
I  said.  'Your  awful  crimes  horrify  me,  and  I 
can  hardly  bear  to  look  at  you.  Why  should 
you  distress  me  as  you  do?' 

1  'I  don't  want  to  distress  you,'  he  re- 
plied, 'but  I  must  get  out  of  this  horrible 
place  !' 

1  'What  do  you  mean  by  "this  horrible 
place"?  I  cannot  understand  you.' 

'  'I  can't  make  you  understand,'  he  said. 
'They  won't  let  me.'  I  don't  know  what  he 
meant  by  'they,'  but  I  thought  it  was  some 
beings  that  controlled  him,  though  I  could  see 
nothing.  Then  he  went  on  in  a  long,  confused 
talk  which  I  could  only  partly  follow. 

"The  substance  of  what  he  said  was  this,  as 
nearly  as  I  could  gather  it.  His  body  was 
buried  in  quicklime  in  a  criminal's  unmarked 
grave;  I  think  he  said  under  the  wall  of  the 
jail,  but  of  this  I  am  not  sure — and  as  long  as 
a  trace  of  it  remained  he  was  tied  down  to  the 
scenes  of  his  crime  and  punishment.  If  he  could 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

only  find  some  one  who  would  pity  him,  and 
show  it  by  'an  act  of  Christian  charity' — he 
used  the  expression  again — his  term  of  suffer- 
ing here  would  be  shortened,  and  he  could  'go 
on;'  that  was  the  way  he  put  it,  although  he 
did  not  seem  to  know  what  it  meant.  His  talk 
was  vague  and  rambling,  and  seemed  to  me 
very  incoherent;  but  his  distress  was  plain 
enough,  and  when  he  stopped  speaking  (which 
was  not  for  some  time,  for  he  kept  going  back 
and  repeating  as  if  he  were  trying  to  make  his 
meaning  clearer)  I  had  lost  all  feeling  except 
that  here  was  a  creature  in  great  trouble,  and 
that  I  ought  to  help  him  if  I  could. 

"When  he  had  finished  I  asked  -him  how  I 
could  show  him  the  'Christian  charity'  he  had 
spoken  about. 

1  'By    giving    me    something,'    he    replied, 
'and  being  sorry  for  me  when  you  give  it.' 

"  'I  am  sorry  for  you,'  I  said.  'Isn't  that 
enough  ?' 

"  'No,'  he  answered,  'that  isn't  enough.  You 
might  have  done  it  if  you  had  bought  the  soap 
from  me  the  other  day.' 

"  'So  it  is  money  you  want?'  I  asked. 

"  'Yes,'  he  said,  'money  will  do,  or  anything 
else  that  you  value.' 

"  'Will  you  stay  where  you  are  until  I  can  get 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

some?'  I  asked: — and  he  said,  yes,  he  would 
stay  where  he  was. 

"So  I  went  into  my  room  and  took  some 
money  from  my  purse,  and  went  back  and 
showed  it  to  him;  there  was  a  half-crown,  a 
shilling  and  some  coppers — there  they  are,  on 
the  dressing  table  beside  you." 

"So  you  did  not  give  them  to  him,  after  all?" 
I  inquired,  taking  up  the  coins  and  examining 
them. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  did,"  replied  my  wife;  "and  that 
is  the  strangest  part  of  the  whole  thing. 

"As  I  said,  I  showed  him  the  money  and 
asked  him  if  that  would  do;  and  he  said  it 
would. 

"Then  I  said:  'I  am  not  going  to  open  this 
door.  How  can  I  give  these  coins  to  you?' 

"  'You  don't  need  to  open  it,'  he  answered. 
'There  is  a  hat  rack  there  behind  you,  with  a 
marble  shelf  in  it — put  them  on  that  shelf.' 

"I  stepped  back  to  the  hat  rack  and  put  the 
money  on  the  shelf,  watching  him  all  the  time. 
I  glanced  at  the  coins  an  instant  as  I  laid  them 
down,  and  when  I  looked  at  the  door  again 
there  was  nobody  there.  I  instantly  turned  to 
the  hat  rack  again,  but  the  shelf  was  bare — the 
coins  had  disappeared,  too ! 

"I  rushed  to  the  door  to  unlock  it  and  run 

[195] 


TRUE     TALES     OF    THE     WEIRD 

into  the  street,  for  I  thought  Deeming  had  got 
into  the  house : — but  just  as  I  had  my  hand  on 
the  key  I  heard  his  voice  in  front  of  me. 

"  'Don't  be  afraid,'  the  voice  said.  'I  haven't 
moved.' 

'  'But  how  did  you  get  the  money?'  I  asked. 
'You  wouldn't  understand  if  I  should  tell 
you,'  replied  the  voice. 

'  'But  I  can't  see  you !'  I  exclaimed. 
'  'No,'  said  the  voice,  'and  you  never  will 
again.    I  have  gone  on.' 

'  'But  you  are  not  going  away  with  my 
money,  are  you?'  I  asked.  'Do  you  need  it 
now?' 

'  'No,'  the  voice  replied,  'I  do  not  need  it. 
You  gave  it  to  me  because  you  pitied  me — I 
have  no  more  use  for  it.' 

"  'Can  you  give  it  back  to  me?'  I  asked. 
"  'I    have   given    it   back,'    said    the    voice. 
'Look  on  the  hat  rack.' 

"I  heard  something  jingle  behind  me,  and 
as  I  turned  around  I  saw  the  coins  all  lying  on 
the  shelf  again." 

The  conclusion  of  this  prodigious  history 
found  me  in  a  state  very  nearly  approaching 
stupefaction.  It  was  not  so  much  the  facts 
themselves  which  it  embodied  as  the  sugges- 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

tions  they  inspired  that  appalled  me,  and  the 
glimpse  they  seemed  to  afford  of  mysteries  the 
human  race  has  for  ages  shrinkingly  guessed  at, 
chilled  me  to  the  marrow  of  my  bones.  "Can 
such  things  be?"  was  the  question  I  asked  my- 
self again  and  again  as  I  struggled  to  regain 
my  composure: — and  although  this  experience 
seemed  a  natural  and  fitting  sequence  in  the 
drama  that  had  been  enacted  in  that  house 
under  my  own  eyes,  I  am  free  to  say  I  could 
not  on  the  instant  credit  it. 

My  wife  detected  my  hesitation  at  once,  and 
said: 

"I  see  you  cannot  believe  what  I  have  told 
you,  and  I  do  not  wonder  at  it : — but  it  is  true, 
for  all  that." 

"I  know  you  think  so,"  I  replied;  "and  in 
view  of  the  very  many  other  strange  events  you 
have  taken  part  in — and  I  with  you  in  a  num- 
ber of  them — I  ought  to  have  no  doubts.  But 
this  is  the  most  staggering  thing  I  ever  heard 
of.  Are  you  sure  you  were  not  dreaming?" 

"Well,"  she  said,  with  a  laugh,  "I  am  not 
in  the  habit  of  dreaming  at  eleven  o'clock  on  a 
bright,  sunny  morning,  and  when  I  have  the 
care  of  the  house  on  my  hands.  And  then,^the 
dogs: — do  you  think  they  were  dreaming, 
too?" 

[197] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

"Ah,  yes!"  I  exclaimed;  "what  about  the 
dogs?" 

"I  told  you,"  she  replied,  "how  they  ran  to 
the  gate,  barking,  and  then  suddenly  turned 
tail  and  rushed  away  in  a  panic  as  soon  as  they 
saw  what  was  there.  When  Deeming  had  gone, 
I  went  out  to  look  after  them,  but  for  a  long 
time  I  could  not  find  them.  I  called  and  I 
coaxed,  but  to  no  purpose.  Finally  I  dis- 
covered them  out  in  the  farthest  corner  of  the 
paddock,  under  the  thick  bushes,  crowded  to- 
gether in  a  heap,  and  trembling  as  though  they 
had  been  whipped.  I  had  to  crawl  in  and  drag 
them  out,  but  I  couldn't  induce  them  to  come 
near  the  house;  at  last  I  had  to  carry  them  in, 
and  all  the  afternoon  they  have  stuck  close  to 
me  as  though  they  felt  the  need  of  protection. 
It  is  only  half  an  hour  ago  that  I  got  them  into 
their  kennels  and  chained  them  up.  You  had 
better  go  out  and  see  them." 

I  did  so,  and  found  one  kennel  empty,  and 
both  dogs  lying  close  together  (as  the  length 
of  their  chains  allowed  them  to  do)  in  the  straw 
of  the  other.  I  had  never  seen  them  do  this 
before,  since  each  was  very  jealous  of  intrusion 
by  the  other  upon  his  quarters,  and  I  was  im- 
pressed by  the  circumstance.  The  poor  brutes 
still  showed  unmistakable  evidences  of  terror, 
[198] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

whimpered  and  whined  and  licked  my  hand  as 
I  petted  them,  and  set  up  a  concerted  and 
agonized  howl  of  protest  when  I  left  them. 
There  was  no  doubt  whatever  that  they  had 
been  horribly  frightened — if  not  by  the  ghost 
of  Deeming,  by  what? — it  was  certainly  no 
merely  physical  agitation  that  their  actions 
showed. 


[199] 


CHAPTER    XII 

THE  DEMONS  OF  THE  DARK 

TRUE  to  his  promise,  Deeming  did  not  reap- 
pear, nor  was  there  any  subsequent  manifesta- 
tion that  seemed  referable  to  him.  To  what 
new  plane  he  had  "gone  on,"  and  whether  to 
one  higher  or  lower,  we  could  only  guess;  the 
door  that  had  closed  upon  his  exit  had  evidently 
shut  in  forever  (as  had  been  our  experience  in 
certain  other  like  cases)  a  mystery  to  which,  for 
a  moment,  we  had  almost  felt  we  were  about 
to  hold  the  key.  Of  the  problem  of  the  future 
life  we  had  a  hint  of  the  terms  of  the  solu- 
tion, but  the  answer  vanished  before  we  could 
set  it  down  below  the  ordered  figures  of  the 
sum.  Such,  I  believe,  has  been,  is,  and  will  be 
the  constant  fortune  of  all  who  venture  far  into 
the  penetralia  of  the  unseen.  Now  and  then 
there  seems  to  be  an  illumination — but  it  is  not 
the  radiance  of  discovered  truth: — it  is  the 
lightning  flash  that  warns  away  the  profane  in- 
truder, and  if  defied  it  blasts  him  in  body  or  in 
mind. 

It  was  because  of  this  conviction  that  my  wife 
[200] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

and  I,  although  having  experience  during  many 
years  of  incomprehensible  occurrences  whose 
narration,  should  I  set  it  down,  would  fill  many 
books  like  this,  steadfastly  refrained  from  al- 
lowing ourselves  to  assume  a  mental  attitude 
that  might,  so  to  speak,  encourage  them.  Far 
from  finding  the  influences  (whatever  they 
were — and  on  this  point  we  were  careful  to 
make  no  inquiry,  and  never  formulated  any 
theory)  reluctant  to  invitation  to  display  them- 
selves, we  were  at  times  compelled  to  offer 
strenuous  opposition  to  their  approach: — even 
a  passive  receptivity  to  strange  phenomena  was 
not  free  from  peril,  and  our  previous  knowl- 
edge of  the  unbalancing  of  more  than  one  in- 
quiring mind  that  had  pursued  the  subject  of 
the  occult  with  too  great  a  temerity  had  con- 
vinced us  that  "that  way  danger  lies" — and  a 
very  grave  danger,  too. 

To  that  danger  we  ourselves,  as  I  believe, 
finally  came  to  be  exposed  in  our  life  in  the 
House  on  the  Hill : — not  because  we  were  lured 
to  seek  out  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  forces 
about  us,  and  thus  gave  ourselves  up  to  their 
influence,  but  because  the  more  or  less  constant 
exercise  of  that  influence  could  not  fail  to  have 
that  effect,  in  spite  of  ourselves: — and  it  is  to 
show  how,  as  it  seemed,  and  why,  this  effect 
[201] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

— at  first  unsuspected — grew  toward  its  sinister 
culmination,  that  I  undertake  the  writing  of 
this  final  chapter. 

Meantime,  I  may  say  that  the  incidents  at- 
tending the  two  spectral  appearances  that  I 
have  recorded,  gave  us  occasion  for  much  curi- 
ous speculation,  in  which  there  was  a  certain 
relief  in  indulging  ourselves.  The  garments 
from  the  wardrobe  of  the  hangman;  was  the 
murderer  doomed  to  go  through  all  Eternity  in 
this  hideous  attire?  The  offered  sale  of  soap; 
is  the  occupation  of  "drummer"  or  "bagman" 
practiced  beyond  the  Styx,  and  for  what  ghostly 
manufacturers  are  orders  solicited?  Was  the 
soap  a  sample?  Was  it  for  the  toilette  or  the 
laundry?  What  was  its  price  per  cake,  and 
was  there  any  discount  by  the  box?  Then  the 
shade's  appeal  for  "Christian  charity,"  and  the 
acceptance  of  it  in  the  tangible  form  of  coin  of 
the  realm!  The  money  was  returned  again, 
but  had  it  meanwhile  been  entered  in  some 
misty  ledger  to  the  credit  of  its  temporary 
bearer?  If  deposits  are  made,  and  balance- 
sheets  issued  in  the  Dark  World,  then  might 
Deeming's  account  seem  to  be  heavily  over- 
drawn. Dealing  in  phantom  money,  and  liqui- 
dating of  shadowy  notes-of-hand ! — do  we  carry 
[202] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

with  us  into  the  Beyond  not  only  our  characters 
and  personalities  (as  some  believe)  but  also 
our  occupations  and  ways  of  doing  business? 
If  Deeming's  discarnated  action  was  thus  to  be 
explained,  he  must  have  been  in  Hell,  in- 
deed! 

Reflections  such  as  these  may  strike  the  reader 
as  flippant,  but  they  were  among  the  natural 
results  of  the  circumstances.  There  was  some- 
thing so  personal  and  intimate  in  these  mid-day 
visits  of  the  apparition,  it  was  itself  so  seem- 
ingly tangible  and  even  human,  and  in  its  ex- 
pressions of  thought  and  manifestations  of  emo- 
tion seemed  to  have  experienced  so  slight  an 
essential  change  from  the  conditions  with  which 
the  living  man  had  been  acquainted,  that  there 
was  little  to  excite  horror  in  the  event,  after 
all.  If  the  phantom  had  imparted  to  us  no  in- 
formation, it  had  at  least  given  us  a  hint  that 
there  was  progress  in  the  realms  of  the  here- 
after, and  had  awakened  a  vague  belief  that 
at  the  end  of  all  there  might  be  pardon.  This 
suggestion  was  tenuous  and  elusive;  but  it  was 
afforded,  nevertheless,  and  I  still  cling  to  the 
hope  that  it  inspired. 

In  writing  this  strange  chronicle  I  have  not 
attempted  to  set  down  all  our  experiences  in 
[203] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

that  house  of  mystery,  but  only  such  as  have 
seemed  to  me  unusual,  or  representative  of  the 
manifestations  as  a  whole.  There  were  cer- 
tain other  phenomena  so  vague  and  evasive  that 
I  am  unable  to  find  words  whereby  to  describe 
their  nature  or  to  convey  the  impression  they 
caused: — all  that  I  can  say  of  them  is  that  they 
seemed  to  invite  us  to  an  inquiry  into  some 
secret  which  the  house  contained,  and  to  beckon 
to  the  success  of  such  an  investigation.  We 
often  discussed  this  apparent  suggestion,  but 
never  acted  upon  it: — chiefly  because,  as  I 
think,  we  were  not  at  all  sure  it  was  not  of 
subjective,  rather  than  objective,  origin — the 
natural  result  of  the  mental  ferment  which  such 
a  protracted  series  of  weird  happenings  might 
be  expected  to  cause.  Moreover,  as  everything 
that  had  so  far  occurred  had  been  without  any 
conscious  encouragement  on  our  part,  we  felt 
some  fear  (as  I  have  intimated  above)  of  what 
might  befall  us  if  we  endeavored  to  place  our- 
selves completely  en  rapport  with  the  agencies 
that  seemed  to  be  at  work  about  us.  There- 
fore we  maintained  as  well  as  we  could  our 
isolated  and  non-conductive  position,  and  re- 
frained from  all  encouragement  to  the  sugges- 
tions that  were  more  and  more  forcibly  borne 
in  upon  us  that  we  should  seek  an  understanding 
[204] 


THE      HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

of  the  meaning  of  the  things  that  had  so  much 
disturbed  us. 

Yet  I  cannot  refrain  from  stating  my  convic- 
tion that  the  phenomena  which  I  have  en- 
deavored to  describe  in  these  pages  had  their 
origin,  not  in  any  disturbed  or  morbid  condition 
of  the  mind  in  any  of  the  three  persons  who 
were  affected  by  them,  but  in  some  undiscovered 
cause  local  and  peculiar  to  the  place  of  their 
occurrence.  If  this  were  not  the  case,  it  seems 
singular  that  manifestations  of  a  like  nature 
did  not  present  themselves  at  other  times  and 
in  other  places.  Any  such  persistent  and  start- 
ling incidents  as  those  that  were  displayed  in 
the  House  on  the  Hill  were,  happily,  foreign 
elsewhere  both  to  my  wife's  experience  and  to 
my  own— such  other  influences  as  have  seemed 
to  come  about  us  having  apparently  been  unaf- 
fected by  conditions  of  period  and  locality,  and 
being  almost  always  of  a  mild  and  gentle  nature. 

Whether  our  tacit  refusal  to  seek  a  solution 
of  the  mystery  that  had  so  long  brooded  over 
us  had  anything  to  do  with  the  even  more  seri- 
ous and  startling  events  that  occurred  during 
the  final  period  of  our  residence,  I  cannot  tell. 
I  have  often  thought  so: — at  all  events  this 
record  would  be  incomplete  without  setting 
them  down. 

[205] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  adventures  in 
which  we  had  participated  for  nearly  a  year, 
came  finally  to  have  a  serious  effect  upon  us, 
both  physically  and  mentally.  Our  curiosity 
and  interest  had  long  ago  become  sated,  and  of 
late  we  had  felt  the  slow  but  steady  growth  of 
something  like  apprehension : — an  apprehension 
even  more  acute  than  that  which  might  be  in- 
spired by  any  definite  occasion  for  fear,  since 
it  looked  forward  to  uncertainties  for  which 
there  seemed  to  be  no  definition.  But  the  days 
passed  slowly  by  until  only  two  weeks  remained 
before  the  expiration  of  our  lease,  and,  since 
the  incident  of  the  brooch  which  I  have  de- 
scribed, nothing  seriously  Untoward  had  oc- 
curred. 

Yet  we  had  lately  been  conscious  that  the 
character  of  the  influence  that  had  so  long  pos- 
sessed our  habitation  seemed  to  be  undergoing 
a  change.  I  cannot  describe  this  change  ex- 
cept to  say  that  it  took  the  form  of  an  ominous 
quiescence.  The  elfish  entities  whose  cantrips 
had  served  more  to  amuse  and  mystify  than  to 
annoy  us,  seemed  suddenly  to  have  abandoned 
the  premises  as  if  retiring  before  some  superior 
approach,  and  the  wraiths  of  the  women  and 
the  child  were  no  more  seen  or  heard  about  the 
rooms  or  in  the  hall: — instead  of  these,  we 
[206] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

vaguely  recognized  the  presence  of  a  mighty 
force,  which  made  itself  manifest  neither  to  the 
eye  nor  the  ear,  but  was  evident  through  some 
latent  or  inner  sense  whose  function  was  to 
apprehend  it.  I  cannot  explain  how  the  im- 
pression was  conveyed,  but  we  somehow  knew 
that  this  presence  was  malignant  and  foreboded 
harm;  and  a  disturbing  uneasiness  grew  upon 
us  rather  than  diminished  as  time  elapsed,  and 
everything  remained  upon  the  surface  serene 
and  calm. 

While  the  familiar  occurrences  to  which  we 
had  been  accustomed  never  lost  their  sense  of 
strangeness,  the  present  cessation  of  them 
seemed  more  uncanny  still;  we  had  an  uneasy 
and  growing  sense  of  something  serious  being 
about  to  happen,  and  often  expressed  to  each 
other  our  common  feeling  of  alarm.  The  cir- 
cumstance that  disquieted  us  most  was  that, 
whereas  nearly  all  the  events  in  which  we  had 
shared  hitherto  had  taken  place  by  day,  this 
new  obsession  was  felt  chiefly  at  night: — it 
seemed  to  enwrap  the  house  in  an  equal  degree 
with  the  gathering  darkness,  and  each  evening 
at  sundown  we  lighted  every  gas-jet,  and  sat 
or  moved  about  together  under  the  influence  of 
an  urgent  craving  for  companionship.  We 
were  like  spectators  sitting  in  a  theatre  between 
[207] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

two  acts  of  a  compelling  performance;  behind 
the  lowered  curtain  a  situation  was  preparing 
whose  nature  we  could  not  guess;  we  appre- 
hended rather  than  perceived  that  the  stage  was 
being  reset,  the  scenery  shifted,  a  new  develop- 
ment provided  for — and  we  feared  beyond 
measure  to  see  the  curtain  lift  again,  as  we  felt 
assured  it  would. 

The  climax  came  at  last,  and  in  a  sudden  and 
awful  manner.  Our  nameless  apprehension  had 
caused  us,  of  late,  to  spend  as  many  evenings 
as  possible  abroad — visiting  friends  and  ac- 
quaintances, or  attending  entertainments  in  the 
city.  Returning  late  one  night  from  the  theatre, 
our  friend  and  I  went  into  the  dining-room, 
while  my  wife  retired  to  her  chamber  to  pre- 
pare for  bed.  We  had  been  chatting  a  few 
moments  when  we  heard  a  piercing  shriek  from 
my  wife's  room;  and  rushing  in  we  were  hor- 
rified to  see  her  standing  close  against  the  wall, 
her  face  white  and  drawn  with  terror,  appar- 
ently striving  to  free  herself  from  some  being 
that  held  her  firmly  in  its  clutches.  Her  aspect 
was  so  unearthly  that  we  stood  for  a  moment 
literally  frozen  on  the  threshold: — then  she 
seemed  to  be  lifted  up  bodily  and  thrown  across 
the  bed,  where  she  lay  with  eyes  protruding, 
and  hands  frantically  tearing  at  her  throat  as  if 
[208] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

trying  to  free  herself  from  some  powerful  grip 
that  was  choking  her.  We  rushed  to  her  and 
raised  her  to  a  sitting  position,  but  she  was  torn 
from  us  again  and  again,  and  from  the  gasping 
and  throttled  sounds  that  came  from  her  throat 
we  felt  that  she  was  dying.  We  cried  out  in 
incoherent  frenzy  to  her  unseen  tormentors  to 
be  gone,  and  struck  wildly  at  the  air  as  if  there 
were  about  her  palpable  objects  of  our  blows. 
This  dreadful  struggle  lasted  for  several  min- 
utes; at  times  we  apparently  prevailed,  again 
we  were  overwhelmed: — finally  the  influence 
seemed  to  pass,  and  I  laid  her  back  upon  the 
pillows,  still  panting  and  trembling  but  no 
longer  suffocating,  as  she  whispered:  "Thank 
God,  they  have  gone !" 

This  experience  had  been  so  frightful,  and 
so  foreign  to  all  others  that  had  befallen  us, 
that  I  found  myself  reluctant  to  refer  it  to  un- 
natural agencies,  and  tried  to  explain  it  as  a 
fit  of  some  kind  by  which  my  wife  had  been 
attacked — although  I  knew  that  she  had  never 
had  such  a  seizure  in  all  her  life,  and  was  in 
perfect  physical  and  mental  health.  Moreover, 
when  she  soon  complained  of  her  throat  hurting 
her,  I  looked  more  closely,  and  with  amaze- 
ment saw  upon  both  sides  of  her  neck  the  marks 
that  no  one  could  have  mistaken  as  other  than 
[209] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

those  left  by  the  fingers  of  a  pair  of  powerful 
hands ! 

At  this  sight  the  little  courage  that  remained 
to  me  abandoned  me  entirely,  and  I  could  see 
that  our  friend  was  equally  unmanned.  "We 
must  leave  this  house  1"  we  exclaimed  in  the 
same  breath: — and  as  we  spoke  my  wife  cried 
out:  "Oh!  they  are  here  again!"  and  at  once 
the  ghastly  combat  was  renewed. 

This  time  our  friend  and  I  made  no  effort  to 
fight  against  the  demons — if  such  they  were;  we 
seized  the  half-conscious  woman  in  our  arms, 
and  partly  carried,  partly  dragged  her  out  of 
the  house.  The  Possession  seemed  to  leave  her 
at  the  door,  and  the  fresh  air  soon  revived  her. 
But  there  was  no  going  back  for  any  of  us  that 
night.  It  was  late  summer,  and  the  air  was 
warm: — so,  bareheaded,  and  with  my  wife 
guarded  between  her  two  male  protectors,  we 
walked  the  deserted  streets  until  the  rising  of 
the  sun  gave  us  courage  to  return  home. 

I  shall  not  forget  those  hours  of  midnight 
and  early  morning: — the  serene  and  amethyst- 
colored  Australian  sky  strewn  with  star-dust 
and  set  with  twinkling  constellations,  and  the 
dark  earth  about  us — across  which,  as  from 
time  to  time  we  approached  the  house  from 
which  we  had  been  expelled,  the  light  from  its 
[210] 


THE     HAUNTED     BUNGALOW 

windows  and  from  its  open  door  gleamed  bale- 
fully.  All  was  silent  within,  but  we  feared  the 
lurking  presence  and  dared  not  enter,  and  after 
one  or  two  returns  remained  only  within  view 
of  it  until  daybreak  was  well  advanced.  Our 
conversation  throughout  the  vigil  need  not  be 
recorded,  but  the  reader  may  guess  its  import: 
— the  awful  experience  through  which  we  had 
passed  had  brought  powerfully  to  our  minds 
the  thought  of  Deeming  in  the  feature  of  the 
throttling  hands,  since  in  all  his  murders  there 
was  evidence  upon  the  throats  of  his  victims 
that  strangulation  had  preceded  the  operation 
of  the  knife.  But  my  wife  opposed  this  grisly 
suggestion : — it  was  not  the  shade  of  the  mur- 
derer, she  affirmed,  that  had  attacked  her,  al- 
though she  could  give  no  description  of  Rer 
assailants — they  were  dark,  formless  shapes — 
resembling  neither  man  nor  beast;  things  more 
felt  than  seen,  even  to  her. 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  assurance,  when  I  re-en- 
tered the  house  and  saw  in  its  usual  place  above 
my  writing  table  the  plaster  mould  which  I  had 
carried  from  the  murderer's  cell  in  the  Mel- 
bourne jail,  I  recalled  with  a  new  appreciation 
of  their  appositeness  the  words  of  the  worthy 
governor. 

Whatever  the  influence  was  that  had  ap- 

[211] 


TRUE    TALES    OF    THE    WEIRD 

palled  us,  we  had  not  sufficient  courage  to 
oppose  it,  and  so  hastened  our  preparations  for 
departure  that  we  finally  quitted  the  house  a 
week  before  our  lease  expired;  and  within  a 
month  saw  the  shores  of  Australia  fade  behind 
us  as  our  steamer  turned  its  prow  toward  Aden, 
Suez,  and  Marseilles.  There  was  one  recur- 
rence of  the  phenomenon  I  have  just  described 
during  the  last  few  nights  of  our  possession, 
but  we  evaded  it  by  taking  to  the  street  again, 
and  again  passing  the  night  therein. 

It  was  on  a  sunny  morning  in  early  March 
— the  month  answering  in  the  inverted  seasons 
of  the  Antipodes  to  September  of  northern  lati- 
tudes— that  we  turned  the  key  that  locked  us 
out  for  the  last  time  from  that  house  of 
shadows.  As  we  reached  the  street  we  turned 
with  one  accord  to  look  back  upon  it: — how  in- 
viting it  appeared  in  the  brilliant  sunshine,  amid 
its  attractive  surroundings  of  grassy  lawn  set 
with  shrubs  in  flower,  its  smiling  orchard  and 
garden!  We  looked  into  one  another's  faces, 
and  each  saw  therein  the  reflection  of  his  own 
thoughts: — there  was  the  relief  such  as  they 
feel  who  awake  from  an  oppressive  dream;  yet 
the  place  had  been  our  home ! 

THE    END 

[212] 


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